


The Tale of the Demon Lord

by KittyGetsLoose



Category: Inuyasha - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Drama, Inucest, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-22
Updated: 2010-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-21 17:30:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 48
Words: 211,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/227754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyGetsLoose/pseuds/KittyGetsLoose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A yaoi, Inucest, slightly dark, fairytale-style story that is strictly for adult readers - what happens when Sesshomaru brings his little brother home after nearly 200 years?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Demon Lord

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** I don't own Inuyasha, and make no money or profit from writing this fanfic; Rumiko Takahashi has all the rights to the original manga and anime and the characters in them.
> 
> * * *

Once upon a time, in the Age of the Ashuras, a time also known as the Era of the Warring Demons, there lived a demon lord who ruled over a vast kingdom in the west. This lord could take both the shape of a man and the form of a great dog as large as any dragon that flew in the sky, for he came from a royal line of powerful canine demons.

The lord had a beautiful queen and a perfect son, both of whom were like him in that they could assume human or canine form, but he was restless in his own castle, for his queen was icy and distant, and their son favoured his mother. The young prince had the long mane of silver hair and golden eyes of both his parents, but like his mother, he bore the mark of the crescent moon on his brow, and his beauty was like hers.

One day, the demon lord and his queen disagreed so violently with each other that the queen left her lord's lands and returned to her own kingdom, leaving her son behind, for the prince was the great lord's only heir.

The prince, Sesshomaru, missed his mother for a while, but he knew that the quarrel between his noble parents had been as much his mother's fault as his father's. And he hoped that he would grow closer to his father now that each was the only family the other had in this kingdom.

However, the young prince so resembled his mother that whenever his father looked at him, he was reminded at once of his cold mate, whom he had always found so hard to love. He ensured that his son was brought up well, as a prince of his rank should be, and that he had the best of everything. He was also proud of his son's strength and talents, which he was certain would surpass his own one day, but he never found it easy to be close and warm to him, or tell him how much he cared for him, for he was too much like his mother.

The more the prince saw that his father was a perfect father to him in every way except in the ways of the heart, the colder he grew to everyone near him, and the more impossible it became for the lord and his son ever to be at ease with each other.

Some time after the queen had left her family, when the prince had almost reached the age at which he would be considered full-grown, the demon lord fell in love with another beauty. She was a mortal princess, not a great demoness as the queen had been, but she was as lovely as the moon in all its glory, and she was kind and gentle and warm, everything that the queen had never been, so the demon lord was very happy with her indeed.

Prince Sesshomaru, however, was angry that his father had fallen for this new lady, and that he treated her better than he seemed to have cared for his former queen. Although the lady wished to be kind to the prince, and to love him as if he were her own child, he remained aloof and held her in contempt.

The prince's anger grew even greater when the lady came to be with child by his father, for he had been an only son all his life, and had no wish to share with a brother or sister what little love his father would give him.

But before the princess' child could be born, trouble came to the land. The demon lord's enemies had begun to gather against him when his powerful queen left his kingdom, and they gathered in even greater numbers when he chose as his new wife a mortal woman, for demons considered mortals weak, and they regarded the lord's choice of a second wife as a sign that his power was waning.

The lord was not afraid for his own life, for he had lived a long time, even for a demon. And he was not afraid for his kingdom or for his son, for Prince Sesshomaru was grown now, and had become a powerful demon in his own right. His father knew that he would rule these lands as capably as he himself had, once he was gone. However, he feared for the safety of his lady and their unborn child, for she was mortal and defenceless.

Knowing that the demon lord and his lady would be most vulnerable when their child was being born, his enemies armed themselves in preparation for that time.

The prince said to the lord: "Father, will you throw everything away for the sake of a mortal female and the half-breed child in her womb?"

His father's answer was: "I must protect that which I love."

"And do you love them more than you love the son you already have?"

"No," the demon lord replied. "I may have been a distant father for reasons that were not your fault, but I have always loved this son who stands before me. That is why my lady and I will remove ourselves from this place, and from you, so that you will not be drawn into our war. This is not your battle."

"Nonetheless, the battle will come to me," said the prince angrily. "For your enemies hope to take all that is yours, including this castle and your lands and my life."

"Then defend what is yours. I give this castle and these lands to you from this moment on. I have no doubt that you are more than able to protect all of this."

"You know I am, Father. But what will you do?"

"I will protect what remains to me – the woman I love, and the child she carries within her body. Those enemies of mine who seek my destruction will come for us, and I will defend my lady and our child to my last breath. If I perish, my title shall also be yours, and what then happens to your stepmother and your half-sibling will be determined by you."

With that, the lord took his lady and left the castle, and he found her the best shelter he could obtain from among a choice of mortal dwellings, for they no longer had access to demon forts, as every demon warlord had turned against them. When the time came for the child to be born, the demon lord's enemies divided themselves into two armies, one to assault the castle that the prince now held, and the other to attack the lord and his lady.

Prince Sesshomaru was as strong and capable and brilliant as his father had raised him to be, and he fully lived up to his name, which meant "Destroyer", for he slaughtered the enemies who attacked his castle, wiping them out so completely that none remained to bury their dead.

But the demon lord had to fight his enemies all alone without a stronghold and with no armies to command, and he sustained wounds from which he knew he would not recover while protecting his mortal princess, who had begun to bring their child into this world.

He slew his last opponent even as the child's first cry pierced the darkness of the night, but his injuries were great. He lived only long enough to see that his beloved lady had borne him a healthy and beautiful son, and to name the child Inuyasha, "The Dog who Pierces the Night", to mark his proud descent from the mighty dog demons of old. He also gave the child a red robe spun from the fur of the legendary fire rat, which could withstand the heat and flames of mortals and demons alike.

The princess wept over her lord's death, but she had her newborn child to care for. So, bearing her precious burden, she trod carefully across the field of battle over which their enemies lay gutted and torn limb from limb, and made her way back to the castle, over which Sesshomaru was now lord.

The new demon lord admitted her and her newborn child to the castle, for the babe was of his father's blood, and he would not have it said by anyone that Lord Sesshomaru had left a helpless infant son of his father's to die in the cold.

But he was distant to the princess and to his half-brother, and as the infant grew into a young child, he and his mother spent their days moving uncomfortably around a dark and unfriendly palace in which glowing demon eyes glared at them from every corner, and no one from the servants to the new lord would spare them a single kind word, for all the castle's denizens held them responsible for the death of their former master.

The young prince, Inuyasha, had the golden eyes and silver hair of his father and his half-brother, but unlike them, he could not take the form of a dog. And once every month, when the moon hid herself from the night sky, he would spend that night in the shape of a pure mortal, with black hair and dark eyes and perfectly human ears. At all other times, he had a pair of fur-covered ears that grew atop his head like the ears of any dog, quite unlike his half-brother's discreet ears when he was in human form. The servants' children pulled his furry ears whenever they could, and teased him and tripped him up round every corner, and he learnt to trust no one except his mother.

From across vast hallways, he would often see his half-brother watching everything with his cold eyes, looking like a pure spirit with his impressive height, great length of silvery hair and spotless white robes, but never lifting a finger to protect him. Indeed, from the look on that perfect and beautiful face, it seemed to him that his brother thirsted to drink the blood that spilled from his skin whenever the servants' children tore his ears or kicked him so that he fell and cut his little hands and knees on the hard stone floors. So he grew to understand that he could not only expect no help from his brother, but that he should instead fear and shun him.

Once, when he was being beaten by a group of the servants' children, he got free of them and ran through the castle to hide from them, only to run right into his brother, who picked him up by his collar, lifted him off the ground, and stared at him with a strange gaze that terrified the little prince. His mother, who had come in search of him, saw what happened and was afraid for her son when she saw the peculiar light glowing in Lord Sesshomaru's eyes by the flame of the candle she held before her.

When Lord Sesshomaru saw the human princess watching them from over the taper in her hand, he lowered the child to the ground and walked away, leaving him to rush into his mother's arms and cry.

By then, the princess and her son had lived in the castle for ten years, and she had long felt that she could no longer bear its chilly air. Now, more fearful than ever for her little son's safety amongst these resentful demons, she decided to leave and live among mortals, and to take Inuyasha with her.

Lord Sesshomaru let them go with the very same uncaring coldness with which he had first admitted them. He later heard indirectly from people who came to the castle and gossiped with the servants that the princess and her son had sought refuge with her father's family, who had been descended from human royalty, but had lost their wealth and most of their titles two generations ago. The princess' father had disowned her when she married the demon lord, but after her father's death, his relations took her back in along with her young son, although they feared his half-demon blood, and treated him just as badly as the demon servants had.

Sixty years later, when Sesshomaru was still a very young lord (for demons have vast lifespans), he heard that the princess had died of old age, leaving her son Inuyasha alone in the world, thrown out by his mother's family and rejected by humans and demons alike.

The demon lord thought very little of this, for he was sure that he had never cared for his stepmother or half-breed brother. But once in a long while, he would think of the child's golden eyes and the bruises on his pale skin, and wonder if he was alive. He knew the half-breed was still a young boy, for half-demons too have very long lifespans, and even after a hundred years have passed, they may not have grown very much at all.

He let another eighty years go by before he thought to enquire after the possible life or death of his brother, and when he received word that he was half-grown now, but still living a very hard life travelling between various villages and towns and shunned by all, the demon lord secretly went to the place where he had last been seen, to have a look at him out of curiosity.

From a hidden place, he saw that his half-demon brother was now taller and stronger, still had furry ears on his head, the same silver hair and golden eyes as himself, and that he wore at all times the fire-rat robe that their father had given him. The robe was magical, and still looked as new as the day it had been woven, but the half-demon who wore it looked poorly fed and wary, and had to fight and hunt for every scrap of food and comfort he could get, for no one was kind to him.

His curiosity satisfied, the demon lord returned to his castle without another conscious thought about his half-brother, for he had other matters to occupy his mind and his time. His own mother had returned to these lands, and she was trying to persuade him to choose a queen of his own, so that he could have heirs of his blood to continue his noble line.

One night, she threw a great ball for his benefit. She had invited every unmated demon female from leagues around. Lord Sesshomaru sat on his throne and surveyed the enormous room in which everyone was happy and dressed in their finest demon threads, laughing and talking, eating and dancing. But to his mother's exasperation, not a single soul among that great crowd sparked the least interest in his eyes or lit the embers of his soul. Rather, he seemed troubled by something in his mind, and spent the evening looking as if he was staring at a point a thousand miles from where he was.

His mother left his kingdom after the ball in annoyance with him, and with little hope that her proud, cold son would ever come to care for anyone else. She wondered for a second if she had given him too much of her own coldness and pride, but as was her wont, she did not think too much about the matter after giving it a moment's thought.

That night, the demon lord returned to his bedchamber, bored by all that he had seen and heard at the ball, but troubled by a strange feeling he could not name. He lay down to rest and soon fell asleep, for he had not slept in ten nights, the way many demons do, and he was tired.

But his sleep was a restless one, disturbed by dream images he could not piece together clearly and by emotions he did not believe he had. One image was far stronger than the others. It tormented his visions until, in the deepest hour of the night, he awoke suddenly and sat up in his bed, his senses filled with the physical evidence of his own lust and arousal – and then he knew without a doubt that no one had drawn his notice at the ball because his imagination had already been fully captured by a certain bright, wary pair of golden eyes that looked so much like his, set in a comely young face framed by hair as glorious as moonlight, and as silvery as his own.


	2. The Demon Lord

Not long after the demon lord had observed him in secret, the young half-demon Inuyasha came to a human village founded around an ancient tree that the people said was sacred to the gods. In that village lived two wise sisters, who were kind to him and took him into their home.

The sisters were important priestesses, and well-respected by the people, so the other folk living in and around that village also came to be kind to Inuyasha and to trust him, although they had initially feared the demon blood that ran in his veins.

For the first time in his life, the young prince had a good place to call home, and friends who cared about him, and he grew into a strong warrior. Fifty years passed in this way, until the sisters had aged into old women, but still Inuyasha remained a child in half-demon terms even though his body had become that of a grown man's, and he continued to protect from brigands and demons and warlords the village that had been good to him.

He heard from time to time that his great demon brother was looking all over the land for him, but he remembered the cold look in those dangerous golden eyes, and recalled how poorly he and his mother had been treated at the castle, so he continued to live a quiet life in the village, seeking peace among the sheltering branches of the ancient tree, and concealing his presence from the people that the demon lord sent out in search of him.

One day, however, he could hide no longer, and the spies from the demon lord found the village where he lived. Immediately, a group of messengers was sent to the village to announce the lord's command to the half-demon. "You are to return to the castle in the west, as Lord Sesshomaru orders you to," said the chief messenger.

But Inuyasha set about him with a stick, and sent him and his men crawling back to the castle with black eyes and broken heads, their ears ringing from a torrent of very rude words that the wild prince had learnt from rough folk since having to fend for himself after his mother's death.

The demon lord was both furious and amused when his messengers returned – furious that his representatives should have been so mistreated, and amused that his brother was brave enough to defy him.

So he went himself to the place where Inuyasha lived, flying through the air as demons of his kind can, to land in the heart of the village. Inuyasha came out ready to fight him, for he did not want to leave the village and return to the unfeeling castle that had never been a true home to him.

When he appeared before him, Lord Sesshomaru saw that his brother had grown into an even stronger and more beautiful half-demon than he had seen him to be fifty years ago, and desired more than ever to have him by his side and in his bed. If only he had known from the beginning what he knew now, he would have kept the child in his castle and raised him to please his lord in every way by which pleasure could be derived. But this was just as well, for his newness to him would prove most interesting, giving him so much more to learn and discover.

Assessing at once his brother's strength and determination, the demon lord decided that fighting him would mean a protracted and bloody battle that neither side would emerge from without damaging losses, so he took another approach and said to him: "Inuyasha, if you insist on opposing my will, I shall not lay a hand on your head, but I will lay waste this village and its great tree, and destroy every mortal soul here, men, women, children and livestock, so if you are wise and value what remains of your friends' pathetic lives, you will leave this place at once and return to the west with me. You are to remain there with me for as long as I command you to. If you leave without my permission, I shall fly back to this village at once and raze it to the ground, with everyone and everything in it."

The sisters, who were old and wise and had seen many terrible things in their mortal lives, looked through the demon lord's eyes and saw in their depths his lust for his brother, which had grown hidden even from himself for almost two hundred years, and they feared for Inuyasha's spirit and happiness.

"Do not go with him," they warned their half-demon friend. "We and many of the other villagers are old now and not far from death, but you have hundreds of years left to live, and you must not surrender your happiness and your peace to your demon brother, who never cared for you, but now wants from you what no one here ever dreamt of asking of you."

When Inuyasha heard their words, he looked again at his brother and saw what the sisters had seen, and he feared the demon's desire that he now sensed and smelt and comprehended. But he could not throw the village into the path of his brother's rage, for despite the suffering he had endured in his life, he had the kind heart of his mother and the compassion of his father.

He said to the sisters: "Even if you have only an hour left of life, that hour must be honoured until the gods choose to end that time, for if my own father had lived an hour less than he did, he would not have seen my face or given me my name. And not all in this village are old and close to death – there are children and young people here, and I would not see them destroyed merely to keep me out of my brother's hands."

So he laid down his weapons and bade his friends goodbye, and submitted to his brother's embrace. Those powerful arms that closed around him did not hurt him, but they felt like fetters forged from demon steel, and their touch was as the touch of a serpent that seeks to crush the life from its prey.

The demon lord flew to his castle with his brother held in his tender and terrible grasp, and declared to all who lived in the castle that Prince Inuyasha had returned, and was to live here from now on.

Inuyasha looked around him and saw that the demon eyes glaring from the dark corners of the castle were unchanged in their ferocity and bitterness towards him. Yet, perhaps because he was older and stronger and bigger now, and could easily kill any or all of them in a fair fight, their unearthly glow no longer frightened him, and their resentment no longer hurt him.

The only thing left now to fear was the demon lord himself, who had brought him here by a force much greater than physical compulsion, through means that were far from noble. He did not fear for his own life, but he could not ignore the threat against the lives of the mortals who had been good to him, so he was determined to give his brother no just cause to turn his wrath against them.

Therefore, when his brother made him sit at the great table with him and eat his evening meal beside him, he obeyed and ate the food and spoke not a single rude word although the demon lord never took his eyes off him, as if he were devouring him as well as the raw and bloody meat on the plate before him.

After the evening meal, his brother himself took him upstairs to where his old room had been, and he saw that he had enlarged it and furnished it finely, much more grandly than it had ever been when he had lived here as a child.

"Your old chamber is to be yours again, and you are free to go anywhere in the castle and within these grounds. But you are not to rest in your room yet, for I require your presence in mine."

As the demon lord spoke those words, he caressed his brother's fur-covered ears and sought his rosy lips with his mouth. Inuyasha yielded to the kiss obediently and without question, even though it felt to him as if he were yielding to death itself. The demon lord was content enough with his submission and his beauty to take him into his own bedchamber at once.

Lord Sesshomaru seated himself on the edge of one side of his bed, very much at ease, as he studied the half-brother he had searched for over the last fifty years, ever since that startling dream had taught him that this being above all others was the one he wanted with him. But Inuyasha stood uncomfortably on the teak flooring just inside the closed door, uncertain of what precisely his lord and brother expected of him.

"Are you going to stand there all night?" the demon lord asked.

"What would it please my lord to have me do?" Inuyasha enquired, with his eyes respectfully lowered, in a voice that offered obedience and yet carried more than a hint of dignity, as if he were a slave of noble blood who was merely humouring his new master's whims while knowing better than he did that what he demanded was wrong.

The quality of his voice did not escape Lord Sesshomaru, but while he would have put to death a true slave for such passive defiance, he considered such pride becoming in a son of his father's. It only aroused him further, for he enjoyed the thought of conquering this little brother of his in spite of the dignity he wielded like a shield.

"It would please me to have you approach the bed and stand before me, so that I may see what is mine – what I searched for for fifty years, perhaps even for a hundred and ninety," the demon lord said.

Inuyasha obeyed and went to stand in front of his seated brother, positioning his feet on the edge of the large carpet upon which the bed stood, keeping his eyes down in order that the one who now held the lives of the villagers in his hands would not think he was challenging his authority.

"Come closer," the lord told him.

Inuyasha stepped forward to be level with Sesshomaru's knees, but his brother drew him nearer till he was standing between his legs.

"Look at me," Lord Sesshomaru commanded.

The half-demon prince looked into his face but tried not to meet his eyes.

"Are you afraid of me?" the demon asked.

"Why should I be?" his brother returned.

"Why shouldn't you be?" came the answering question.

Inuyasha met his gaze then, and Lord Sesshomaru was pleased to find that while there was still no fear in the beautiful boy facing him, their brief exchange of words had sparked the tiny fire of anger in his golden eyes, a spark that glowed quietly but steadily as the demon lord's fingers began to unfasten the garments of the half-demon prince.

He removed from his brother's body the fire rat robe that had been a gift from their father, and the layers beneath it, till the prince stood completely unclothed before him, his eyes lowered again, either in respect for his lord's higher rank, or out of embarrassment at his own nakedness.

The demon lord held him at arm's length and looked over every inch of his bared front, to impress upon his own mind the perfection of what he considered now as belonging to him.

Then he rose to his feet and walked around Inuyasha to study him from the back as well, and when he found himself more than satisfied with what he saw, he began to remove his own garments.

Inuyasha could hear his brother shedding his own pure white raiment behind him, and he shivered to feel the demon lord's eyes upon him as he disrobed. Lord Sesshomaru brushed against his skin as he passed him again and lay down on his bed, reclining naked against his pillows with the greatest of ease, casually displaying his sleek but powerful physique with its fine, long, pale-as-snow limbs, without an ounce of self-consciousness.

"Come to me," he said to Inuyasha.

The prince climbed onto the great bed, made his way across the covers on his hands and knees, and sat back on his heels beside the demon lord.

"Touch me," Sesshomaru ordered.

Inuyasha did not need to ask where his brother wished to be touched, for it was plain that he meant him to stroke the hard, lengthening member that swelled and pulsed between his thighs. He grasped the organ with his right hand, gingerly, as if afraid to hold it.

"Does this disgust you?" Sesshomaru questioned him, keeping his eyes fixed on his face.

"No, my lord," Inuyasha replied steadily, still keeping his eyes down. "But I am unaccustomed to doing such things, and unskilled, and I fear I may make mistakes that will displease you."

A diplomatic reply, thought the demon lord, who said: "You will not displease me if your mistakes are not made on purpose – and I will know if they are." As he said this, he put his hand over his brother's and moved it to stroke the shaft up and down until Inuyasha understood the rhythm that would please his lord and no longer needed that guiding hand over his.

"If you are contemplating the possibility of freeing yourself and your friends by killing me in my bed, kill that thought, for my demons will carry out my orders against the village if I should die unexpectedly," Sesshomaru murmured.

"I have thought of no such thing, my lord," Inuyasha answered calmly.

"How coldly you say 'my lord' while pleasing me so intimately," the demon remarked. "You are to call me 'Brother', or 'Sesshomaru' when we are alone."

"That would be inappropriate, my lord," the half-demon replied. "I have no right to address you by your name, and you have never given me the right to call you brother."

Besides, the young prince thought secretly, I was raised by humans – and among humans, brothers do not do such unspeakable things to each other.

"I give you the right now," the demon lord declared, his voice tightening as his pleasure increased in accordance with the movements of Inuyasha's hand. "Either call me brother, or say my name."

"Yes, my lord."

"That is not my name."

"Sesshomaru," the half-demon said quietly, the name unfamiliar on his tongue.

"Good. Now that my name is on your lips, use your mouth where your hand is – some wetness will heighten my pleasure."

Inuyasha did as he was told, licking Sesshomaru's cock and enclosing its silky-smooth tip in his mouth till his brother, breathing fast and heavily now, put a hand on the back of his head to keep him where he was as he came with a gasp, the cry escaping him softly but powerfully, as if he had released a lifetime of tension imprisoned inside his soul.

Inuyasha was startled by the heat and quantity of the creamy liquid that shot into his mouth, and some of it spilled out over his chin onto Sesshomaru's groin and abdomen. He almost choked on what he had managed to contain, but was able to swallow it all before it gave him any further trouble, then he carefully slid his brother's subsiding erection out of his mouth.

When he saw that some of the fluid had spilled over Sesshomaru, he instinctively lowered his head again and flicked his tongue over the demon lord's skin and dark-silver pubic hair, until he had cleaned up every drop.

Sesshomaru found himself pleased to an unexpected degree by the boy's instinct to do what he had done, without being told. He felt his arousal climb again as he felt that hot little tongue lapping at his flesh, and stared down at the attractive sweep of Inuyasha's silver hair, accented by those triangular ears and curving sinuously from his crown all the way along his bare back.

He put his fingers under the boy's chin and lifted his head to look into his face before leaning towards him and drawing his tongue over the traces of fluid left around the half-demon's lips, licking up the remnants of what had issued from his own body. When he drew back, he was gratified to observe the first signs of physical arousal in his brother.

Inuyasha had returned to the castle prepared to do anything he was ordered to do that did not cause gratuitous harm to another being, but he had not been prepared for his own body to turn against him by giving an outward sign of what was not within his heart. For he inwardly despised the demon lord for his present lust and the past contempt with which he had treated his mother, and nothing within his soul found his brother admirable, although his eyes accepted that Sesshomaru was the most beautiful creature in the entire kingdom.

But now this body that had served him so well all his life was listening to his eyes rather than his heart to traitorously produce an uncomfortable erection that was rising from his lap even as he knelt there right before him, and he could do nothing to stop it.

It was too much to hope that his brother would not notice, or that he would let it pass. As expected, Sesshomaru noticed, and did not let it pass – he extended a hand and traced a circle around the tip of the half-demon's erection with one finger, which only made it grow. Then he looked into the wide golden eyes that were such a naïve mirror of his own, and gave his next order: "Lie down."

But when Inuyasha made to lie on his belly over the bedclothes, Sesshomaru stopped him with a hand under his chin, and said: "Not like that, my little one – I'll have you on your back."


	3. Despair

Lord Sesshomaru's bedroom was an almost completely white space, except for its teak-wood floor. The walls and ceiling were white, but one part of the ceiling – the portion directly above the bed, was adorned with hand-painted swirls and curves in many kinds of blue, the deepest of which were the very shade of the crescent moon on the demon lord's brow. His parents had commissioned a great artist to paint that design above his bed when he had still been a very small child, so that he could have something to look at on those nights when he was supposed to rest but could not sleep.

Now, Inuyasha lay on Sesshomaru's great bed with his arms by his sides, staring up at the fascinating blue shapes. He did his very best to lose himself in the pattern-without-a-pattern and forget what was happening to him, for he felt painfully exposed to the one who sat beside him and gazed down at his unclothed body after having ordered him to lie flat on his back, not giving him permission to cover himself in any way.

He did not wish to show the fear he felt, but he grew more nervous the longer Sesshomaru sat looking at him without making a move. He felt his palms grow damp against the fine cloth of the bed linen as an involuntary shiver rippled over his skin.

"Are you cold?" the demon lord asked evenly.

"No, my lord," he answered, keeping his eyes on the intriguing blue design above him. He decided right then that even if he could not control the traitorous responses of his body, he would get through this, for he told himself that this was not him, this was not Inuyasha lying here, and that he would give up everything Sesshomaru demanded from behind a mask that would shield his soul until he could find a way to leave.

"Is that how I instructed you to address me?"

"No, Sesshomaru."

Sesshomaru traced a claw, carefully and slowly so as not to break the skin, around each of the half-demon's nipples in turn, making him shiver again and increasing the arousal that Inuyasha did not wish to display to this half-brother of his, but which he could not force down.

The younger of the two inhaled sharply as he felt the demon lord drawing his clawed finger gently down his torso until he reached the hardening erection that was growing heavy between his legs. Sesshomaru encircled the stiffening member with his fingers and began to stroke it firmly but not roughly, never taking his eyes off Inuyasha's face until the boy gasped from the sensations he did not wish to take pleasure in, but could not help giving in to.

Pleased by the reaction he had elicited from his brother, the demon lord lowered his head to Inuyasha's groin and ran his tongue along the length of his erection and back down again to lubricate it and further stimulate him, nipping too at the glossy hair in which its base was nestled. Continuing to stroke him with his hand, he then laid kisses all the way up Inuyasha's body to his neck, and the touch of those lips to his warm skin made the half-demon gasp again and arch his back, a response that made his cheeks burn and left him feeling so ashamed that he turned his head away from the demon lord to hide his face.

But Sesshomaru at once seized a fistful of hair between Inuyasha's furry ears and twisted his head back towards him, so that he could look full into his face.

"You are to keep your face towards me, do you understand?" the demon lord growled, steadily stroking his brother's shaft with an expertly varied rhythm, using the skill of one well-practised in amusing himself by his superb ability to control others.

Inuyasha tried to nod, for he did not want his trembling voice to betray him further, but Sesshomaru tightened the fist in his hair and commanded: "Answer me."

"Yes, Sesshomaru," Inuyasha breathed unsteadily, on the point of crying out as the pleasure felt by his body grew, quelling the revulsion in his mind which tried to tell him that nothing so disgusting had ever happened to him before.

"Say that again," the demon lord ordered, stroking him harder and faster.

"Yes, Sesshomaru!" Inuyasha cried out, and as he did, he lost his control over all he had fought to hold back. He moaned helplessly, discarding his shame to thrust hard into his brother's hand, until he came with an anguished cry, arching into Sesshomaru's grip, straining to throw his head back against the bedclothes, except that the fist in his hair held his head so that the demon lord could observe in full the expression of near-pain flash over his beautiful face, watch his lips part, feel his breath against his own skin as he keened, and see his eyes begin to close as his climax peaked.

"Look at me!" Sesshomaru growled with a sharp tug at Inuyasha's hair, commanding his brother to open his eyes and look directly into Sesshomaru's own until his body had spent the very last wave of its overpowering orgasm, and his seed coated his chest and abdomen.

When he was satisfied with all he had drunk in of the sight and sound and responsiveness of the body he had played like an instrument, he at last released Inuyasha's hair as a signal that he would now be permitted to shut his eyes and turn his head away, and as the half-demon did so, a tiny whisper of "Sesshomaru" escaped his lips again.

It might have been no more than a half-unconscious echo of how he had been commanded to speak the name earlier, but nonetheless, the sound of it pleased Sesshomaru considerably, so that he lay beside his brother for a good few minutes, stroking his disordered hair back into place, leaning over his face to kiss his blood-flushed lips, and dipping a finger into his spilt seed to taste it.

"You've been ever so perfect," Sesshomaru murmured as he nuzzled the boy's hair and neck. He knew from the sound of his breathing that Inuyasha had not yet fallen asleep, but his eyes remained closed, and he imagined that he must be tired out and overwhelmed by these unfamiliar exertions.

So he smiled to himself and lifted him into his arms, smearing the cum on his torso over his own skin as he held him close, making Inuyasha's eyes flutter open again with a look of surprise. Sesshomaru, taller and stronger than the half-demon, easily held Inuyasha against his body and carried him through his bedroom into the adjoining bathroom, in which the water in the large, sunken stone bath had been kept hot by the servants according to his orders.

This they did through a system of metal pipes that channelled heated air from a furnace one floor below, to the heat-retaining stones forming the floor of the bath. All the baths in this wing, a part of the castle exclusively for the bedrooms of the royal family, could be prepared and maintained in that fashion, either by separate fires, or all together through the main furnace. That way, it was not necessary for servants to move constantly in and out of the royal wing to cart hot water in and drain cold water away. The baths could be emptied of their used contents and refilled with clean water at the times of the day most convenient for the occupants of the chambers, when they had left their rooms and the guards could watch the servants carefully.

It had worked that way since Sesshomaru's father had been the ruler, and it suited the present demon lord for reasons of security, and also for reasons of privacy – when he chose to be private – as he did now when he entered the bathroom holding his half-brother like a child and walking into the bath with him clasped in his embrace.

Inuyasha struggled a little as he was lowered into the water, but Sesshomaru understood that his resistance in this instance stemmed from respect and not rebelliousness. As the lord of this castle and these lands, he should have entered the bath first, and the half-demon should have waited until he was given permission to step in, but he was more than satisfied by all that he had drawn from his brother on their first night together, so he carried him into the bath as a mark of his favour.

"You looked so beautiful when you came for me," Sesshomaru whispered into Inuyasha's hair, near his left ear, as his hands sought the startled half-demon's body and gently cleaned his skin and the ends of his hair while they sat in the bath.

The boy, not knowing what to do other than to try and mask his face again with the passionless politeness that would protect his soul, simply lowered his eyes and spoke quietly, saying: "In the absence of the servants, I should wait on you as you bathe, my lord Sesshomaru – it is not right that you should attend to me in this manner."

The demon lord allowed the compromise of using his title with his name to slide, for now.

"No, this pleases me," he said, washing away from his brother's body not only the physical evidence of what they had done in his bed, but also the scent of the village from which he had come, until he was completely clean and smelt as if he truly belonged to him, not to the mortals he had lived among.

His scent was now so delightfully full of puppyish innocence that Sesshomaru had half a mind to continue making love to him in the bath. The boy had been ashamed of how his body had responded in his bed, but now that he had gone through it, he would surely be bolder and less restrained? Perhaps he would enjoy himself a little? But when his hands wandered to Inuyasha's buttocks and his fingers crept to the small, tight orifice hidden deep in the crevice between them, his half-brother shrank away from his prying hands and parted his lips as if to speak in protest, and Sesshomaru saw clearly then the drawn look on the boy's face, and the shadows under his eyes. It suddenly seemed to him as if Inuyasha had been putting on a brave face all this while, but could no longer conceal his exhaustion.

He was so young, and so unused to these pastimes, thought the demon lord. Besides, he had had a long day before coming home. So even though Sesshomaru had the right to punish him for resisting his lord in any way at all, he knew he must not force things further if he was to keep from completely wearing out this amusing new toy of his. He therefore ceased all further explorations of his delectable body and allowed him out of the bath after exacting from him no more than a deep kiss on the mouth.

He wrapped him in warm robes and sat him down beside the bath to comb and dry his hair. He would then have led him back to his bed if Inuyasha had not bowed his head and requested: "If you have no further need of me for tonight, may I please return to my room, Sesshomaru?"

The demon lord had not expected such a request, for he had had many lovers over the years, all of whom were of no importance to him and whom he had never permitted to remain in his bed after he had used them as he pleased. Every one of them had hoped to linger and win greater favour with their lord, but had been sent away the moment he was done with them. Wanting Inuyasha to stay here with him was an offer the half-demon should have felt honoured by, for the demon lord thought that he must wish to sleep in his brother's bed after having performed so perfectly for him there. But he concluded that the boy must feel drained, and that he might be uncomfortable about spending the entire night in such an imposing room after living in a humble village for fifty years.

"You may," he therefore said in reply to his request. In their bare feet, he and Inuyasha walked the length of the teak-floored bedroom to the door, and he even accompanied him out of the room, past the guards, down the corridor and to the door of the prince's chambers, outside which he had posted another pair of his most trusted guards to protect his new possession. It was an unusual thing for the lord of these lands to do, for he could have had a servant escort Inuyasha to his room, or left him to walk down the corridor alone – but after having searched so long for him, and having acknowledged the desires within himself that he had suppressed for two centuries, it was his wish to keep him within sight until he was inside his own bedroom.

At the door, he kissed him again on the cheek and on the brow, before letting him enter his chamber and close the door behind him.

Sesshomaru returned to his room, summoned a servant and had her pick up Inuyasha's clothing, including his fire rat robe, and take it all away to be washed. He wanted no further scent of that village around his castle, now that he had discovered he was pleased enough with the boy to want to keep him for a very long time.

His bed felt emptier than it had in an age as he climbed into it. Somehow, Inuyasha had made it seem a warmer, more inviting place to rest in simply by having lain in it for a short time on this his first night back home, and already Sesshomaru wished he had not given him leave to go to his room. He lay down under the covers and tried to give his body and mind the repose they ought to have after several nights without rest, but sleep would not come, no matter how he studied the blue curves and swirls above the bed.

It would look foolish to the guards, and quite contrary, if he were to call for Inuyasha again, so Sesshomaru did something he had not done in more than one hundred and ninety years. He threw off the covers, rose in the dark of night, and strode to a secret door set in one wall of his room, near the entrance to the bathroom. The door, which only he knew how to open, led to a short, hidden passageway that ran beside the bathroom and ended at another secret door which again could be opened only by himself. He had no difficulty making his way anywhere in the night, without a taper or lamp, for demons can see in the deepest darkness, and this particular demon could see very well indeed.

One hundred and ninety to two hundred years ago, for motives unknown to his younger self then, he had sometimes stolen down that private passageway in the dead of night and opened that other door so that he could look quietly but with burning eyes at the sleeping form of his little brother as he lay in his simple bed.

As he had done in those days, he soundlessly opened the secret door on this night and looked into the room – a room that had been made much bigger now, and which was furnished with a beautifully carved bed that was truly fit for a prince. He could not approach Inuyasha from here, for that would mean revealing the existence of the secret passage. But he could at least look upon the boy again, and see if he might be open to a knock on his room door announcing his brother's intention to enter and spend the rest of the night with him. Perhaps the boy would be irritable and uncooperative if he were awakened from a slumber his body needed following a day like this one, but perhaps he would also be pleased to serve his lord again now that he had to have overcome some of his earlier bashfulness?

It never crossed Sesshomaru's mind that seeing the demon lord again on this night might be the last thing that Inuyasha would want. But that unwelcome fact hit him brutally as he stood in that secret doorway when the sharp, hot scent of tears rose through the air and drifted to his sensitive dog-demon nose, and he realised that Inuyasha was crying quietly in despair as he lay in his bed, hiding his face in his pillow to stifle an endless flow of heartrending sobs.

He felt the boy's misery knifing his heart like a shard of pure crystal, and he stood there concealed by the drapery of the walls until, after what seemed like hours, Inuyasha fell asleep at last, and he withdrew silently to his cold, lonely room.


	4. Dress Sense

Because he had cried himself to sleep the night before, the prince was worn out and still lost in troubling dreams at an hour of the morning when he would normally have been awake. That must have been why he did not at once sense that the guards outside his door had let someone into his room – he was usually alert to the proximity of others even while asleep, for long years living as an outcast had taught him that he was most vulnerable to danger while he slept.

Eventually, the sounds of movement about the room made him sit up with a start, wondering if an intruder had broken in, or worse, if Sesshomaru had entered. But the individual who faced him was a servant, judging by her dressing, one who had not been at the castle when he was a child, for he had never seen her before. She was a pretty racoon demon, with black and white-striped hair. Unlike the old servants and their children who had taunted him and hurt him, she had a gentle demeanour, and her posture was respectful.

"Who are you?" he asked, jumping out of bed and keeping a wary distance from her, wondering what she was here for. As he stood up, he realised that he had fallen asleep in the bathrobe Sesshomaru had wrapped him in, instead of changing into the comfortable sleeping garments that had been set out for him at the foot of his bed.

"I beg your pardon for startling you, Your Highness," she spoke, bowing. "My name is Natsumi. Lord Sesshomaru has assigned me to attend to your wardrobe and bath requirements. I came in to lay out the clothes that Lord Sesshomaru indicated you should wear for breakfast with him."

"I do not wish to wear what he has chosen for me," Inuyasha said curtly, still suspicious of her despite her distinctly non-threatening air. "Where is the robe I had?"

He had worn his father's gift of the fire rat robe all his life, for it was a magical garment that grew with him, and repaired and cleaned itself. He now realised that he had been so traumatised by Sesshomaru last night that he had left the room without stopping to pick up his clothes.

"Your red robe was sent for cleaning, Your Highness," Natsumi replied.

"It doesn't need cleaning! It cleans itself!" Inuyasha exclaimed. He was a naturally quick-tempered youth who tended to launch himself into fights, for aggressiveness at the right times and keeping out of sight at others was what had kept him alive after his mother's death. But as he flared up now, he remembered that he was supposed to behave so that his brother would not hurt his friends. In a calmer voice, he told Natsumi: "Please get it from the laundry room and return it to me. I want it back."

"Your Highness, I can retrieve your robe, but Lord Sesshomaru has asked that you wear these garments today." She gestured towards various items of clothing she had taken out of the wardrobe and draped over a finely carved side table and stand.

"Look – I don't want to make things difficult for you, so just get my fire rat robe and give it back to me, please!" Inuyasha insisted.

"Your Highness, Lord Sesshomaru will be angry with me if I do not dress you as he has instructed," Natsumi said worriedly.

"I'll be the one to face him. You won't have to bear the brunt of his anger."

"Nonetheless, he will be angry with me!" she said quietly, but earnestly. "Please, Your Highness –"

"I'm not wearing any of this stuff!" Inuyasha cried, losing his temper at last. "Give me my own robe!"

At that moment, the room door opened and Sesshomaru appeared in the entrance. Natsumi looked as if she would faint, while Inuyasha blanched, remembering all that the demon lord could do to him and to the village. But he was too upset by now to completely calm himself, and he glared at his brother furiously.

To the servant, Sesshomaru said: "Go the laundry room and ask if the prince's robe has been washed and dried. If it is ready, bring it back here."

"Yes, my lord," Natsumi replied, bowing low and hurrying out of the room.

Once she had left, Inuyasha snapped at his brother: "You said I had to stay here – you didn't say anything about wearing your stupid clothes!"

He sounded to Sesshomaru as if he was on the verge of breaking down. His unnatural, unquestioning compliance of the night before, and all he had been made to do, had taken its toll, and the small matter of what he was to wear had tipped his emotional balance badly.

Before he had slipped through the secret passage, Sesshomaru had believed that the evening had gone very well, and that with a little grooming and discipline, Inuyasha would come to enjoy being the favourite lover of the demon lord. But evidently, to Inuyasha, the evening had been nothing but a nightmare.

Having seen and heard him weep so bitterly, Sesshomaru had seriously considered letting him go before he waded in too deeply and forced matters past the point of no return. If he released him, it would appear to everyone that the demon lord had sampled the goods, found them not to his taste, and struck them off his menu. No one would have thought it unusual, for Lord Sesshomaru was known to have his whims and be hard to please. It would have been so easy to just tell him that he could take his gaudy red robe and leave.

But this was a new day, and looking now at the boy teetering on the knife-point of outright rebellion, all the more spectacular for the emotions that heightened his features, he knew that he could not let him go.

"Inuyasha," Sesshomaru said authoritatively to keep the situation under control. "You behave as if someone here would steal our father's fire rat robe. I assure you that it is perfectly safe in the hands of the servants whom I trust to clean my own garments. When Natsumi has retrieved it, it will be perfectly safe in any of the _perfectly_ good cabinets and chests I chose for your room, to hold the wardrobe of clothes that I commissioned for you long before you returned. You are a prince, and my father's son, and I will not have you walking about looking as if you have nothing to wear but the clothes you had on your back when you arrived. If it means that I will have to hold you down, strip that bathrobe off you and force you into appropriate garments, I will not hesitate to do so."

He delivered his speech in a sufficiently fierce voice to make Inuyasha's dog ears fold down a shade, although those bright golden eyes still flashed angrily. Sesshomaru stared hard at him until Inuyasha came to his senses and lowered his eyes at last.

Natsumi soon returned with the fire rat robe and rough white inner garments neatly folded. Inuyasha all but snatched them from her.

"Give those robes back to Natsumi now so that she can put them away in one of the chests," Sesshomaru ordered. "I expect you dressed and in the dining hall for breakfast before the sun reaches the top of that tree."

He pointed out of the window to a tall pine whose branches the sun peeked through, before turning on his heel and striding out of the room. Natsumi hurried over to close the door, then turned back to Inuyasha. With hands outstretched to receive the fire rat robe, she wordlessly begged him to comply with his brother's orders.

Inuyasha glowered, but decided that this was a small battle not worth losing blood over; so he yielded the red robe to the servant and allowed her to put it away in a lacquered chest before she returned to his side to help him wash and dress.

She had earlier set out a fresh chamber pot for him to relieve himself, and washbasins and cloths so he could clean his face, mouth and hands. She ushered him to the connecting bathroom and asked if he wished her to assist him. He looked shocked at the suggestion and declined, so she withdrew.

Later, when he returned to the bedroom, she held out the white upper and lower innermost layers of clothing to him and turned away from him so that he could drop his bathrobe and don the new garments without having to expose himself to her, for she had gathered that he was shy about being seen in an undressed state. Then she helped him put on the next layer – also white, but finer, with barely-visible white embroidery along its hems and seams. The last pieces of clothing to go on were the dark-blue silk outer robe with gold embroidery that matched the colour of his eyes, and blue trousers, teamed with a gold sash. A pair of fine white socks and soft boots were slipped over his feet, which he had always preferred to leave bare.

Natsumi angled the standing mirror so that Inuyasha could approve of the overall effect. He stared at his reflection and concluded that he did not look as stupid as he had thought he would wearing fine robes. In fact, these clothes suited him very well. It made his stomach turn, because the idea that Sesshomaru might like him to look a certain way left him feeling unclean.

He voiced no objections, however, so Natsumi set down a stool of beautifully polished blackwood behind him and asked him to be seated for her to do his hair.

"My hair's fine as it is," he grumbled. "I don't want it tied up in bunches or anything like that."

"Certainly not, if you do not wish it, Your Highness," she replied. "If you prefer to leave your hair loose, I shall simply brush it and smooth it down with a touch of light plant oil."

He let her do so, although he itched to slap the brush away and use his own claws to tidy his hair, for that was how he had groomed his mane for the last one hundred and thirty years. However, he refrained from doing so because Natsumi was gentle, and the way she brushed his hair reminded him of how his mother had lavished attention on him while she lived. Besides, she had looked so afraid of Sesshomaru's wrath that Inuyasha did not wish to give her more trouble.

When she was done, and his beautiful silver hair looked better than it had in a century, she said: "You are ready to go to breakfast now, Your Highness. Please do not be late, or Lord Sesshomaru will be upset."

"Why?" he asked dully. "It's not like he really needs to eat, anyway. I remember what he was like before – he hardly ever ate."

"Yes, but Lord Sesshomaru always has the table set when he is at home. Even when he does not eat, he drinks water, tea or wine at the table, depending on the time of day, and reads his letters or papers."

So Inuyasha left his room and went to the dining hall, whose location he remembered quite clearly although he and his mother had almost never dined in it, preferring to have their meals in their own rooms so that they would not have so many pairs of hostile eyes upon them as they ate their food.

By the time he entered the hall, he had recovered his composure, and was able to bring himself to bow in greeting to his lord and brother before taking the seat that the hall servants saw him to. He saw that Sesshomaru eyed him as he walked towards the table, the look on his face telling him that the demon lord liked how he was turned out in his new clothes. It gave him an unclean feeling again, but he suppressed it and kept his temper in check as he took his seat and glanced at what was on the table.

The spread before him mostly featured fruit, milk, bread rolls stuffed with finely shredded air-dried meat, and piping-hot rice porridge with minced meat and a raw egg broken into it, all the things that he liked for breakfast. He wondered if Sesshomaru had really remembered his preferences – which he had rarely had the opportunity to enjoy – from almost two hundred years ago, or if he had asked someone who would know.

He sat along the side of the table, close to the head and to his brother's left, so that they were as good as seated beside each other. He noticed that most of the servants in the dining hall were new too, and none of them glared at him or addressed him disrespectfully as the older ones had when he had lived here before. One approached and asked him if he would like to have the bread rolls first, so that was just what he did.

He thought that he would consume a few bites only out of obligation, but as he sank his teeth into the bread, he realised how hungry he was, and continued eating with more enthusiasm than he had thought he would be able to muster, going on to the fruit, then the porridge, all of which tasted very good.

Sesshomaru, who was so powerful a demon that he rarely needed food for sustenance, was content to drink his tea and watch his brother tuck into the fare. It pleased him to see that Inuyasha was not completely miserable this morning as he had been last night, and he told himself that perhaps the boy had been crying only because he missed his village and friends. He would get over his homesickness, for this was supposed to be his true home.

But when he reached out to stroke one of the two locks of hair that hung alluringly beside Inuyasha's face, parted from the rest of his silvery mane by the furry ears atop his head, the boy started and shrank away before seeming to recollect the role he had been brought here to play. He then looked worried and set down his porridge spoon, and sat tensely gripping the edges of the chair beneath him with his hands.

Sesshomaru should have been angered by this uncooperative display – and no doubt he would have been angry if he had not heard Inuyasha crying the night before. However, the stifled sobs he had listened to in secret had pierced his heart in a strange and uncomfortable way, and the boy's apparent loathing of him now increased the discomfort.

But he was proud and domineering, and would not allow a little unease within himself to put him off anything he wished to do, so he took hold of the silky lock of hair after all and ran his hand down it while Inuyasha sat still and with his eyes fixed on a spot on the table top.

"Your hair is more like Father's," Sesshomaru said evenly, as if he had not noticed that Inuyasha had flinched from him. "It is glossy when properly groomed, just like his was. My hair is more like my mother's."

He knew such information would be of interest to the boy, who did not remember their father. As he had calculated, Inuyasha raised his eyes and looked at him, keen to hear more.

"Father almost always kept his hair tied up in a single bunch, sometimes braided, so that it would not get in his way while he trained with his sword or went forth to subdue his enemies – which he did rather often when I was much younger," Sesshomaru continued, moving his hand now to stroke the mane of hair that cascaded down Inuyasha's back. "Times were different then. I used to keep my hair bound too, but after we destroyed every one of our enemies that had any power to speak of, and father died, I left my hair down, for I no longer felt the need to look like him. It does not bother me when I train, and yours does not seem to trouble you either."

He removed his hand from his hair and looked into Inuyasha's face, then at the food on the table. "Don't you wish to finish your breakfast?" he asked.

"I'm not hungry any more," Inuyasha replied, although his bowl of porridge was only half-eaten.

"You can order anything you want from the kitchens whenever you like. If you feel hungry later, tell the servants. Come with me."

Sesshomaru rose and strode out of the dining hall. Inuyasha trailed behind him at first, uncertain about where they were going, but the demon lord indicated with a tiny movement of his head that he was to walk beside him. As they passed through the great halls and long passageways of the enormous castle, Inuyasha observed that while a good many of the old servants were still around, and still glaring resentfully at him, many more of the castle staff had not been employed here when he was a child, and these regarded him as one would expect good servants to regard a prince who was the brother of their lord.

Sesshomaru took him to a room that he remembered was the library and study. A little green kappa demon who had been poring over documents at a desk squeaked when they entered, and almost tripped over his webbed feet in his rush to prostrate himself before them.

"Oh! Lord Sesshomaru!" he cried in a high-pitched voice. "I did not hear you approaching! Forgive me for not having greeted you and Prince Inuyasha at the door."

Inuyasha decided at once that the kappa was irritating, but probably harmless.

"Jaken," Sesshomaru said. "Have you made the arrangements we discussed before?"

"Oh yes, Lord Sesshomaru! His Highness your brother may begin his lessons whenever he is ready!"

"What lessons?" Inuyasha asked suspiciously. "I thought you brought me back to this castle just to –"

"Just to fuck you?" Sesshomaru asked, as coolly as if he was talking about the weather.

Inuyasha blushed furiously, while Jaken studied his own feet as if they were the most fascinating objects in the world. But Sesshomaru carried on as calmly as he had begun, saying: "Well, as we haven't got quite that far yet, perhaps you would be interested in learning things of a more academic or artistic nature. Your education must have been interrupted by your mother's passing. It is my intention that you continue where you left off. Jaken will oversee your lessons, and supervise any others that may be taught by other teachers. After each morning's studies, you will be free to do as you please for the rest of the day."

"And then what?" Inuyasha growled.

"And then, my little one, I expect to see you on time for dinner, and after that, I expect you in my bedroom."

Inuyasha blushed harder, from embarrassment and resentment, as Sesshomaru kissed him on the forehead before striding out of the library, leaving him there with Jaken.


	5. Strategic Thinking

Much to Inuyasha's surprise, Jaken proved to be a competent tutor. During their first lesson, he taught Inuyasha some of the finer points of calligraphy, tested his reading and letter-writing skills, and introduced him to the principles of statecraft and leadership, which he believed a prince ought to be schooled in.

Despite his grating voice, shortness of temper and clumsiness of movement, the little green demon was mentally sharp enough to impart knowledge, and shrewd enough to know how to cope with the half-demon prince's mercurial personality. He was so loyal to Sesshomaru that he took his word as unquestionable law, and thus looked upon the demon lord's entrusting of his precious half-brother's education to him as a great honour, a charge that he would do his utmost to fulfil.

He was also unexpectedly discreet, despite his long-windedness. He asked no questions about Inuyasha's past, or his present relationship with his brother, nor did he make insinuations or speculative comments about Sesshomaru's motives for bringing Inuyasha back to the castle.

Once the half-demon discovered that the kappa bore him no ill-will, he decided that there was no need to wear a mask around _this_ fellow, and settled down well enough to his first day's lessons. He was a bright lad who had been well-educated by his mother while she had lived, and was a quick learner. However, he was also mischievous by nature and tormented the kappa all morning with his cheeky questions and his considerable arsenal of practical jokes and rude vocabulary – which he had honed while living all those years alone after his mother's death.

By the time the sun was high in the sky, marking the end of the morning, they were both relieved that study time was over, although each quietly concluded that much could be achieved through these lessons in time to come.

Freed at last from the library, Inuyasha leaped easily from its front balcony into one of the landscaped gardens below, not bothering to use the stairs despite Jaken's squawks of protest that it was unbecoming of a prince – even a strong half-demon fully capable of far more spectacular stunts – to jump about like a wild animal. He ignored his tutor's grumbling, dashed through the garden, and disappeared.

He had asked Jaken earlier where he was allowed to go, and the kappa had replied: "Your Highness, all the castle staff have been informed that you are to be given as much freedom within these grounds as Lord Sesshomaru himself enjoys. You may go wherever you please, as long as you do not leave the grounds without his express permission."

So Inuyasha shot off like a bird released from a cage, and began to explore the place that he had rarely dared wander about in for too long at a time when he was a child, as the spiteful demon servants and their children were always lying in wait for him, to bully and hurt him. But no one troubled him now. Apart from a few dirty looks from the old-timers, everything felt different outdoors, and all the newer servants he came across as he wandered through the grounds acknowledged him respectfully without exception.

To the casual onlooker, he was simply discovering all that the castle and its sprawling gardens, ponds and rockeries had to offer; but a more canny observer would have seen that he was scouting the perimeter of the castle itself to see where the guards were posted, and glancing over the grounds to determine where security might be highest or lowest along the high-walled boundaries of its territory.

The guards' barracks, and the stables for the dragons and flying steeds, stood at one end of the grounds, while the quarters of the servants who were mostly engaged in outdoor work stood at another end, alongside the living and working quarters of other employees who did not need to live within the castle proper. A separate structure, rectangular, fairly imposing, and not too far from the castle, was the place where Inuyasha remembered that Sesshomaru held meetings with his ministers and political staff, most of whom travelled to these grounds from their own homes scattered throughout the kingdom as and when required.

The massive castle dominated the central raised ground, with one large wing for the rooms of the kitchen, housekeeping and laundry staff, and another for the rooms of the security and administration personnel. A grander wing was set aside for rooms meant to house important visitors, while an inner wing housed the servants and medical staff who were trusted, trained and qualified to personally attend to the ruling family or their guests.

The most secure wing, heavily guarded inside and out by the best sentries, was for the demon lord and his family. Inuyasha and his mother had slept in its rooms before; his father's room had been there too when he was alive; and of course Sesshomaru – and _his_ mother, when she had resided here – had also lived there. Guards were posted under the windows of his chambers and Sesshomaru's, the only windows left open in that wing, as those rooms alone currently had regular occupants.

He had seen the guards far below when he had peered out of his own window the night before, and he could see a new set there now, and other guards on the roof, making certain that nothing and no one flew, crept or broke into the personal sanctuaries of their lord and his brother – or left without permission.

He could not escape from his brother yet, not while he was still a new and amusing object to him. But he was looking to the future, to a time when Sesshomaru might grow bored with him. At such a time, he might not react so quickly or angrily if Inuyasha left, and he might have enough time to warn his friends in the village to hide until the demon lord's anger had passed.

He would observe how things worked in and around the castle now, so that when the time was right, he would be able to slip out unnoticed. But not now. Not yet.

His head drooped as he turned away from the gardens in the late afternoon and directed his footsteps toward the castle, for that was where he would have to endure Sesshomaru's attentions for as long as he must, until the demon lord tired of his new toy.

As he still had a few hours before dinner, he explored the inside of the castle too, wandering from room to room and surprising a number of servants by walking in on them without warning as they worked. Sentries stood at various doorways and along certain corridors, but none stopped him from going wherever he wanted to.

He turned a corner and padded on his soft boots down a passageway within the security and administration wing, guarded but quieter than other parts of the castle near it, and entered one of the rooms to suddenly find himself in Sesshomaru's presence. The demon lord was looking over documents at a desk near the wall on his right. As he raised his eyes at his brother's entrance, Inuyasha made a quick bow in apology for having disturbed him, and turned to leave.

But Sesshomaru called him back before he could take a step in retreat: "Inuyasha. Come in."

Reluctantly, he moved deeper into the room which he now saw was an office, but so elegantly furnished that anyone who gave it the briefest of glances would know it was used by the demon lord himself.

"Have you had your midday meal?" Sesshomaru asked.

"No, my lord," Inuyasha replied, as the guards were just outside the door, and Sesshomaru had only said he should address him by his name when they were alone.

But his brother came around his desk, tipped up his chin with his hand, and said to him: "You need address me as your lord only in the presence of guests, or the representatives and ambassadors of other tribes who come on official business. Not because it feeds my pride, but because formal situations require it."

"Yes, Sesshomaru," he answered, sufficiently mastering his feelings enough to accept the touch without flinching.

"Why haven't you eaten?" his brother asked, lowering his hand to his side. "The housekeeping staff told me that you ordered nothing from the kitchens."

"I wasn't hungry." It was not the truth, as his tummy had been growling after his lessons with Jaken, but he had been too busy scoping out the grounds. He could hardly say that, however.

"Have some fruit," Sesshomaru said, drawing a plate spilling over with purple grapes across the surface of the desk towards them.

"No, thank you. I can wait for dinner."

"Come now, you could do with something," Sesshomaru insisted, separating a small cluster from the main bunch, severing the stalk easily with his claws.

As Inuyasha hesitated, Sesshomaru plucked off one large, deep-hued, perfectly round grape and held it before the half-demon's lips until he opened his mouth and took the fruit between his teeth, carefully, trying not to make contact with Sesshomaru's fingers, although he could not stop him from stroking his lower lip with his thumb as he released the grape.

He bit down on the ripe, firm sphere in his mouth, and the juices burst over his tongue. It was good – the best of its kind, as the demon lord would expect from everything served to him. The flesh was sweet and the skin crunched with firm succulence as he chewed on it and pushed the pips towards his front teeth with the tip of his tongue.

Sesshomaru held out his hand under Inuyasha's chin. The younger of the two looked up at the elder, eyes widening, then shook his head to say that no, he would not spit out the seeds into his lord and brother's hand. But Sesshomaru inclined his head a little more while raising his eyebrows a fraction to communicate the message that he was still waiting. So with not a little disbelief, Inuyasha worked the pips out of his mouth with his tongue and lips and dropped them into Sesshomaru's open palm.

The demon lord turned his hand over an empty, polished wooden bowl beside the plate of grapes, and let the seeds fall into it. Then he asked Inuyasha: "Have another?"

But the half-demon had had quite enough of this peculiar situation, and declined firmly. "No thank you. Please may I go?" he asked. "I should wash up before dinner."

"Certainly. Natsumi probably has your bath ready by now."

He wanted to turn and run, but he forced himself to take his leave with a little bow, and to walk out of the office instead of sprinting away like an ungoverned child.

Jaken had told him in the course of the morning that Sesshomaru spent most of his days either in meetings with his ministers, or working privately in the office on correspondence with other demon tribes, which had appointed new chiefs and pledged their allegiance to him after he and their father had destroyed all the leaders and lords who had gathered against them two hundred years ago. He had the responsibility of settling disputes between the tribes, keeping potential large-scale disturbances from erupting, ensuring that his own territories were not encroached upon by bandits or hostile armies, and looking over the reports of his treasurers to confirm that all the tribute owed to him by the clans living within his lands and by tribes who looked to him for protection was paid on time and not filched by corrupt officials lower down the line.

Jaken had made it plain that Sesshomaru was busy enough, and delegated too little work to others, so Inuyasha was disturbed that he would take even that much time out to feed him grapes. It unnerved him. If Sesshomaru wouldn't keep his distance from him when he was supposed to be working, he could imagine how much worse the nights to come would be, if he chose to let off steam by having what he regarded as fun with his half-demon plaything.

Once he was back in his room, he took a quick look inside the chest where Natsumi had stored his fire rat robe, just to make sure it was still there, even though he knew that no one in the castle would dare to steal it, and the guards would not have permitted anyone other than Sesshomaru, Natsumi or himself to open any of the cabinets, drawers or chests.

Natsumi was setting out the things he would need in his bathroom, and once again asked him if he wished her to serve him during his bath.

In response to her query, he asked: "Do I look like a pervert to you?"

Natsumi bit her lower lip to stop herself from smiling. "No, Your Highness. But it is common for Lord Sesshomaru to be attended by his personal servants as he bathes, except on occasions when he wants time and space to think, so I thought you might wish the same."

"Well, I'm not like him."

Although he had never actually seen his brother bathing before last night, Inuyasha remembered from his childhood what information his nose and ears had conveyed to him whenever Sesshomaru had had his daily baths in those days, information supplemented by overheard gossip. His royal brother had always been attended by a troupe of servants, male and female, and he had used any or all of them as he had pleased. They washed him right down to the most intimate places, and when the urge took him – as it often did – he would have them pleasure him, or would do the most extraordinary things to them merely to show that he had power over them, and could control others' bodies in ways that required skill, discipline and strength.

"I will not serve you during your baths if you do not choose it, Your Highness," Natsumi said. "But if you wish me to help you wash your hair, I can do so whenever you want."

"Did you ever attend my brother during his baths?"

"Yes, until recently."

"Did he… do things to you?"

"If by 'things' Your Highness means acts of a sexual nature, then yes, he used to," Natsumi said, lowering her voice. "However, in the last fifty years, Lord Sesshomaru has not demanded much from his servants or his lovers either in his bathroom or his bedroom. He was too preoccupied with searching for you, Your Highness."

Inuyasha's heart sank. Did that mean he would now be expected to make up for those fifty years of relative deprivation all by himself? He groaned and walked into the bathroom, leaving Natsumi to hover near the doorway, just out of sight, to ensure that she would be close by if he needed anything.

He slipped into the perfectly hot water into which Natsumi had sprinkled cleansing herbs and petals for scenting the bath and his skin, and soaked himself in it to relax his limbs, scooping a few handfuls over his head to rinse his hair. He sat in there until she called out to him that it would soon be dinner time, so he should come out and get dressed.

She had set out fresh clothing for him in shades of white and gold, cut from a warmer fabric for evening, but of a simpler design as no guests were expected in the castle.

"Did he choose this too?" Inuyasha asked her.

"Yes, Your Highness. But Lord Sesshomaru has not made any further selections of clothing for you. He has instructed me to help you decide what you want to wear from tomorrow onwards."

"But everything in the wardrobe was chosen by him."

"Yes, Your Highness, although Lord Sesshomaru has also said that if you want anything else made, you may order any fabrics you want and have them tailored to your liking."

He thought that idea absurd, because the wardrobe was already bursting with clothes, and if he managed to make his escape early enough, he wouldn't get through so much as a third of them. What did Sesshomaru think he was? A doll he could dress up as he pleased?

His shoulders sagged as it occurred to him that if Sesshomaru really wanted to treat him like a doll and dress him up, he would be able to do exactly that, without meaningful opposition.

Natsumi saw him deflate, but did not dare to ask why. So she dried and combed his hair and helped him to dress, mostly in silence, before he went to the dining hall for dinner.

Again, Sesshomaru eyed him as he entered, but unlike at breakfast, he did not try to touch him, nor did he say much to him. Servants came and went from the table constantly throughout their meal, bringing messages and letters, and Inuyasha gathered that something of a political nature had cropped up that needed the demon lord's immediate attention.

"I must deal with this," Sesshomaru said to Inuyasha, crumpling up a note in his hand. "I shall see you later tonight."

He left Inuyasha to finish his excellent meal of rare steak, which he did at his leisure, before returning to his room to await his brother's summons.

The message came soon enough, conveyed to Natsumi through one of the demon lord's personal servants: Sesshomaru was still occupied with his work, but His Highness the lord's brother was to go to his chambers in two hours' time.

Inuyasha shrugged when he got the message, but he was in fact tense, as he wondered what he would have to endure tonight, when last night had been humiliating enough. Natsumi set a large sandglass on its end to help him keep track of the time, then asked if he needed anything more. He said no, so she withdrew to her own quarters.

Left alone, he wandered about his room, opening cabinets and chests to see what was in them. Besides the generous quantity of clothing and accessories he had previously seen, he found some bed linen, fine stationery, skin and hair oils, and tortoiseshell combs, as well as a host of miscellaneous but well-made items. Displayed on various pieces of furniture were ornaments and works of art like jade figurines and porcelain vases.

He felt like smashing the lot, but that could wait till it was safe for him to run away. Then he would leave a trail of broken, ridiculously expensive stuff all over the floor of this room, and piss over it too, as a memento to his perverted brother.

For now, though, he was required to please him – in any way he demanded. Although… there was nothing to say that he couldn't start finding ways to behave badly while obeying Sesshomaru in the main, was there? He just needed to think about how to approach this…

He found, however, that dreaming up strategies was draining. Tired after his long day, and sleepy from the large amount of steak he had consumed, he sat on the edge of his bed trying to think, but growing drowsier by the minute as he waited for the two hours to pass. Soon, he slipped off his boots and lay down on his side, curling up against his pillows and drawing up his sock-clad feet.

Later – too much later – he shot upright as his unconscious mind warned him that he had overslept, and that since receiving the message from Sesshomaru, he had been in his room not for two hours but possibly three. His eyes flew open as he sat up, only to see Sesshomaru standing in front of him, towering over his bed, gazing down at him out of a pair of unreadable golden eyes set in an impassive face.

Inuyasha was furious with himself – that he would do something as stupid as doze off and oversleep right after reminding himself that he needed to please Sesshomaru until he had found a good way to get back at him or get away. Dazed with sleep and light-headed from sitting up so suddenly, he jumped to his feet and swayed for a second as he lowered his eyes and blurted out: "I'm sorry – I fell asleep. I–"

Standing there with his head bowed, he could not look into Sesshomaru's face, and the demon lord remained silent for a long time. But at last he spoke, to give the order: "Go to my room now."

Inuyasha hurried out of his room and padded down the passageway in his white-socked feet to Sesshomaru's chambers. He could sense his brother walking at a slower pace behind him, and felt his eyes burning into his back every step of the way.


	6. Controlling Hand

Inuyasha took several quick steps into the room before turning around so that his back would not be to Sesshomaru as he came in. Sesshomaru entered and closed the door behind them, before walking up to his brother and firmly taking hold of both his upper arms. Inuyasha expected that he had done so to keep him in place as he slapped or punched him, and he raised a stoic face to meet whatever was to come.

But to his astonishment, Sesshomaru pressed his lips hard against his mouth and backed him up till his knees hit the bed frame, and he ended up on the mattress, legs dangling over the side of the bed, until the demon lord on top of him wrapped his arms around his upper body and lifted him completely onto the bedcovers.

Staring directly down into Inuyasha's eyes, he said quietly: "I waited for you."

"I'm sorry…" Inuyasha murmured uncertainly, thrown off balance, for he had expected anger, he had expected punishment; what he had not expected was a kiss accompanied by words that mysteriously made him feel guilty. And it was hard for him to feel bold and dignified when he had literally been caught napping and had just been kissed hard for it.

"How sorry?"

Inuyasha had to swallow what felt like an enormous lump in his throat before he could reply: "Very." He wasn't certain that he meant it from the bottom of his heart, but really, what other appropriate response was there?

Sesshomaru considered his answer and the look in his eyes, then told him: "Good. It would be a pity to make you any sorrier for it, when you looked so innocent as you slept – perhaps it was worth the wait, to see that childlike peace on your face."

Inuyasha flushed to hear what sounded suspiciously like tenderness in Sesshomaru's voice. He did not like what the words portended, and he shivered as Sesshomaru sought his lips again.

"Why are you trembling?" the demon lord asked him, drawing back after the kiss. "I won't hurt you – not very much, at least. Or perhaps I should say that while I may cause you a little pain sometimes, I won't harm you."

Inuyasha had led a hard life and was certainly not afraid of pain – but he was terrified of whether the kind of pain that Sesshomaru could inflict would make him behave in ways that his pride would normally never allow him to.

It would have made him feel worse had he known that Sesshomaru had arrived at the conviction that the way to keep him contented and compliant was to treat him gently while disciplining his beautiful young body into learning how to crave his elder brother's touch.

Sesshomaru was running his hands down that body now, shifting his own weight back onto his heels till he was seated near the half-demon's feet. He lifted the boy's right foot with his hands and began to peel off the finely woven white sock that cocooned it like a second skin.

Inuyasha tried to sit up, protesting: "You shouldn't do that," for that sort of task was a servant's job. But the demon lord made him lie back again, and Inuyasha watched nervously as his brother slipped the sock off and dropped it to the floor beside the bed. Then he did what seemed to the half-demon to be the most unbelievable thing – he brought Inuyasha's toes to his mouth and teasingly licked them, while keeping his eyes fixed on his face.

Inuyasha squirmed from the ticklishness and sensuality of it, but also cringed because he had run about barefoot all these years, and was accustomed to thinking of his feet as the useful but filthy appendages that carried him everywhere. However, two days of long, hot, cleansing baths, having his feet properly clad in socks and soft new boots, and Natsumi's sneaking in a foot bath for him while she groomed his hair before dinner, left his toes cleaner than they had been since his mother's death, and those toes seemed to appeal to Sesshomaru.

The demon lord repeated the ritual with the boy's other foot, and from the way he squirmed all over again, the older brother deduced that the younger was ticklish. He drew a claw experimentally down the sole of the left foot he held in one hand, making Inuyasha jump.

"So this is your weak spot, is it?" Sesshomaru asked, running the claws of all his four fingers and thumb in a rapid, weaving motion over the sole of the lad's foot while his other hand imprisoned his ankle.

Inuyasha wriggled and tried to pull his foot away but could not, and in a matter of seconds, a helpless burst of laughter broke from his mouth.

Sesshomaru stilled his fingers for a moment, charmed by the sound of the near-giggling he had not heard from the boy in almost two hundred years – even back then, the giggles had been hushed as the tiny child who had lived in this castle had shared private, loving moments of laughter only with his mother in their rooms as they sheltered together in a confined world of their own.

Inuyasha gulped. He had not meant to laugh. He had told himself only yesterday that he would never laugh for as long as he was forced to live with his brother, but here he was, breaking his promise, betrayed once again by the sensations of his body, which would not listen to his heart. Yet, the mere act of laughing, though not heartfelt, seemed to lift a small pebble from the grudge like a pile of rocks he carried in his soul, and he found himself chuckling and squirming again when Sesshomaru resumed the playful motions of his fingers. Before he could stop himself, he had twisted into a half-sitting position to cling to Sesshomaru's hands with his own and to plead breathlessly: "Sesshomaru – please stop!"

He was close to tears, but whether that was a result of his laughter or his feelings of overall helplessness, the demon lord knew not. However, Sesshomaru did release his ankle and stopped tickling him, holding his head instead to press another kiss to his mouth while his lips still bore traces of a smile – however forced that smile might be.

Inuyasha, who would never have dreamt of licking his own feet, did not like the idea of kissing a mouth that had just been all over his toes, but he bore it. After all, he remembered just where his own mouth had had to be last night, and he feared it might soon be in rather worse places if Sesshomaru proved to be as odd as the experiences of these past two days indicated he was.

But it was Sesshomaru who was now getting his mouth everywhere, applying his tongue and lips to Inuyasha's furry ears, down the side of his face, and over the sensitive skin of his neck, licking and nibbling at his shoulders as he uncovered them. He slipped Inuyasha's clothes off, one by one, finally drawing his trousers down his legs and letting them fall to the floor to join the socks, inner shirt and outer jacket.

That untiring tongue got to work next on Inuyasha's stiffening erection, which glistened at its tip as it throbbed to life, and he enclosed him completely with his mouth, making him moan with pleasure and dismay. At the same time, his fingers gently probed the recessed space between the boy's firm buttocks.

Inuyasha attempted to shy away from Sesshomaru's invasive fingers once he felt the point of one claw making contact with the opening of the nether passage that he firmly believed was intended for expelling things from the body, and not for the admission of anything under the sun. But Sesshomaru was dextrously pleasuring him with his mouth while searching out his hidden parts with his hands, and he couldn't, wouldn't dare, didn't want, to pull away too much.

Sesshomaru felt Inuyasha's discomfort, but discovered to his satisfaction that the puckered orifice which currently interested him was so small and tight that even with the greatest care, he felt he could not slip his finger more than the merest millimetre past its opening without nicking the delicate skin inside with the tip of his claw.

So he gave all his attention to pleasuring the boy with his mouth until he came with a despairing cry that instantly made Sesshomaru grow uncomfortably hard. He tasted the hot, creamy fluid on his tongue and in the back of his throat, and took every last drop, for he liked what he had sampled on the previous night.

While Inuyasha was still recovering his breath and half-turning his body to bury his face in the bedcovers – an action the demon lord would ordinarily not have permitted, but which suited his purpose at this time – Sesshomaru slipped out from under one corner of the covers an item he had concealed in his bed.

It was a quartet of jade finger-gloves, designed to fit over his long, lethally clawed digits. Each separate piece of jade was rounded at its closed end, carved hollow inside, smoothed to perfection on its outer surface, and of a length to match the finger it was meant for once it was pulled on. Strong but butter-soft strips of thin black leather strung through holes pierced near the open ends of each piece loosely linked the four and allowed Sesshomaru to knot the ties securely around his wrist, so the jade would not slip off his fingers.

Before Inuyasha regained full awareness of his surroundings, he leaned over the boy, moved his mane of hair aside, and stroked his spine with his left, unsheathed hand, while his right, its fingers rigidly encased in jade, began to probe the half-demon's virgin entrance.

Inuyasha drew his breath sharply and made to turn over, but Sesshomaru's left hand held him down, and his voice soothed him while holding a threatening undernote. Still, Inuyasha resisted, and Sesshomaru had to warn him: "Be still, unless you want me to tie you down – you may be very strong, but I am a good deal stronger than you, and I do have ropes and shackles of demon thread and metal that will hold you easily."

That was Sesshomaru's idea of treating him gently – he imagined that Inuyasha ought to know that if he had wished to be harsh to him, he would have tied him up from the start and thrust hard into him without preparation. Naturally, Inuyasha knew no such thing. All he heard was the threat, and his survival instincts telling him that it was better to be humiliated but unbound, rather than humiliated _and_ bound.

Once Sesshomaru saw him demonstrate through stillness that he would heed his recommendation, the demon lord slipped a pillow under the boy's hips to raise his behind for easier access, and nudged his legs apart.

He lay still enough for Sesshomaru to lift his left hand off his back and lean over to pick up a small, stoppered jar of oil from the bedside table. Flicking the stopper off with the thumb of his unadorned hand, he pressed his left palm over the jar's mouth, tipped the container over briefly to coat the palm with its contents, then stood the jar upright in the crook of his own knee before smoothing the oil all over the jade on his right hand.

The implications of these new steps alarmed Inuyasha, who tensed and looked almost ready to roll over and bolt, the consequences be damned. Sesshomaru repositioned his left hand lightly over the boy's back as a warning to stay where he was, as his right hand got to work.

While he could not flex the middle or upper finger joints, the separate jade pieces meant he could still fold any of his fingers straight down at the knuckle joints while keeping any of the others erect. Palm up, he folded three fingers out of the way while pressing his covered index finger against the tight opening that was now trying to disappear between the clenched globes of that firm little bottom so attractively presented on the plump pillow holding it up.

With his behind kept raised by the pillow, and his legs spread, Inuyasha could hardly conceal anything from Sesshomaru. The well-oiled digit slid an inch into the snug passage before its intrusion provoked a short, sharp cry from the half-demon, who had to be steadied again through the light pressure of his brother's hand on his back.

"There now," the demon lord said in a voice that was still calm, but laced with the whisper of growing arousal. "I've hardly penetrated you at all. It seems unbearable only because no one's ever got so far with you before, but you'll be fine."

He pressed another half-inch in, very gently. Though he felt Inuyasha tense with discomfort – and distaste – the half-demon did not cry out again, or plead with him to stop as he had with the tickling.

Once again the sense of unease made its presence known in Sesshomaru's chest, telling him that he was imposing his will on an unwilling being who regarded their forced relationship as unnatural. But he suppressed it, because he had desired this creature under his hands for too long now, and he would not halt this course of action. Besides, was he not being gentle, and kind, and seductive? Had he not held back his anger and cruelty in response to the boy's tears? He would make Inuyasha enjoy his attention, crave his touch, thirst for him.

He slipped the remaining length of his jade-sheathed finger into Inuyasha a second faster than planned, provoking a small, stifled gasp from him and more of that sense of resigned disgust.

Sesshomaru did not like that. He wanted him breathless with pleasure and yielding fully to him, not this sense that he was bearing with it till it was over and done with. He was almost tempted – despite his choice to be kind – to tie him down, whip him and rape him just to force an instinctive response, make him scream without holding back, curse and hurl insults and, finally, beg. But he had learnt that he disliked it when the boy was miserable. In any case, breaking him like that would be the quick and easy way through, and Sesshomaru did not often believe in taking easy paths.

He drizzled more oil over as he began to work his finger in and out of Inuyasha, slowly increasing the pace until the half-demon began to whimper, though he could not tell what proportion of those cries came from pleasure, and how much originated from discomfort.

The boy's face was turned away from him, but he would let that go for now because he was cooperating quite well considering it was his first time being touched like this. In fact, he could see and feel Inuyasha starting to grind his hips almost indiscernibly into the pillow under him. _Good,_ thought Sesshomaru. Although it should have displeased him that the boy would stimulate himself by humping a bed accessory, he felt there would be long-term benefits from his learning to associate pleasure with his lord and brother's ministrations.

Besides, if he was thrusting into the pillow – even if ever so slightly – it naturally meant he would have to move his hips back for the next thrust, and that had the delightful effect of his seeming to push back onto Sesshomaru's finger, as if he wanted him deeper inside.

Sesshomaru wished to see more of that. He ran some more oil over the jade, withdrew his index finger and erected his middle digit to join it, pressing them both against that fascinating little opening.

Inuyasha tensed again, but Sesshomaru stroked his back to calm him, and proceeded slowly with his right hand. It was a very tight fit, but gently, he eased the tips inside his body, and Inuyasha moaned into the bedcovers.

"There you go," Sesshomaru whispered. "Two fingers now – that's not so bad, is it?"

He moved further into him, and Inuyasha choked down a noise in his throat.

"Is this too much for you?" the demon lord asked softly.

With his face buried in the covers, Inuyasha shook his head, like an upset child refusing to be comforted. Then he suddenly took a deep breath, as if he had reached a decision about something. Sesshomaru watched with interest as he turned his head to his left towards him, raised his upper body a little on his elbows, glared backwards and upwards at his older brother, and growled: "It's not like you'd stop if I said it was."

Once more, Sesshomaru found himself at a point where he ought to have been furious, but again realised he was not only not furious, but amused. No one else in Inuyasha's position, with two fingers of the great demon lord pushed up his ass, would speak so defiantly out of the blue after a relatively long stretch of acquiescence. Only _this_ half-demon – with his feistiness from having had to hold his own against the world for so long, his knowledge of Sesshomaru which blended the familiar and unfamiliar, and his innate pride from his upbringing by his princess mother and the blood inherited from their lord father – would defy him while obeying him.

"If I truly believed you could not take it, I would stop," Sesshomaru said. "But I don't think this is too much for you. I think you might like it if you'd just relax."

"I'm not going to – aaah!" Inuyasha broke off his words with a sharp cry as Sesshomaru pushed both fingers all the way inside.

"You were saying?"

"That fucking hurt!" Inuyasha snapped, his thin veneer of politeness cracking.

"I'm sorry – too hard?" Sesshomaru murmured.

"You know damn well – aaah!" he cried out again as the fingers started to stroke him, moving in and out along a three-inch back-and-forth route.

He buried his face in the thick covers again to muffle his moans, until the need for air and the relentless attentions of Sesshomaru's hand left him panting for breath with his head turned aside, hidden under his gleaming silver hair. With the claws of his left hand, Sesshomaru carefully combed the hair to fall over one side of Inuyasha's neck, so it would not veil his lightly flushed face.

"Don't hide from me – you look too beautiful to cover your face," the demon lord whispered to his little brother, leaning down to touch his lips to his neck while continuing to work his fingers in and out of him until Inuyasha began to whimper frantically and grind harder and faster into the pillow under him, pushing back over Sesshomaru's fingers and thrusting into the pillow till he came with a desperate cry that rocked his spirit and body so that he shuddered from the tips of his ears to the ends of his toes with the sweet burst of release peaking, then fading into ever-fainter contractions, leaving him at last limp and speechless, almost unconscious from its intensity.

Sesshomaru knew that Inuyasha had pretty much made himself come by thrusting into the pillow, and that his hand had had very little direct effect on his orgasm. But he was thoroughly pleased with the conviction that he had brought him to a far more powerful climax than he would otherwise have achieved, by placing him in a position of psychological helplessness, physical submission, and complete exposure to the powerful lord he loathed, making the surrender to his sexual urges overwhelming once his resistance finally broke.

Sesshomaru slowly withdrew his jade-clad fingers, tugged at the leather bindings round his wrist to release the glove, and lowered the contraption of precious stone and hide to the carpeted floor beside the bed. He set the jar of oil back on the table, then wrapped a hand around Inuyasha's hips and raised his body a little to extract the pillow, noting to his satisfaction the cum smeared over the linen case. He dropped the pillow to the floor, reminding himself not to throw it away; it might be a trophy worth keeping.

He himself was extremely aroused by now, rock-hard from the whimpers and sharp cries of the beautiful creature on his bed, and he felt compelled to relieve his tension – or make it worse – by partially undressing himself and sliding his body over Inuyasha's to press his erection into the small of his back as he whispered into the furry ears at the top of that silky head: "I can't wait to claim you completely."

Inuyasha opened his eyes and began to struggle, but Sesshomaru had pinned his arms to his sides. The demon lord was enjoying the futile writhing of the body beneath him, but quickly determined that he did not want him too frightened either, so he calmed him with a soft assurance: "Don't be afraid – I know this has been rather overwhelming for you, so I won't go further tonight."

The struggling grew less violent, and abated almost completely when Sesshomaru repeated his assurance: "I won't go further for now."

The boy grew slightly tense under him when he slid down so that his cock rested between the cheeks of his butt, until he made it apparent through the lack of further movement for some time that he only wanted to hold him and cover him with his body.

When the lad was completely calm, seemingly quite relaxed, Sesshomaru let him lie there under him, still and silent, eyes closed, until he judged that he had recovered enough to be roused and sent off to the bathroom with a pat to his delectable little bottom – a parting touch that earned the demon lord a quick backward glare.

Sesshomaru heard him enter the water before he himself rose from his bed, shed the rest of his clothes, picked up his jade finger gloves and stepped into the bathroom.

Inuyasha, immersed up to his chin in the water as if he was sulking, glanced up at his naked form – complete with its rather large erection – with no small measure of alarm in his eyes. The reappearance of the jade contraption did not ease his trepidation. But Sesshomaru only wanted to wash it, for this was one item he chose not to leave to his servants to clean. He eased Inuyasha's fears by scooping up hot bath water in a porcelain jug and pouring it over the jade into a small basin, running his fingers over the smooth stone segments to cleanse them before drying the pieces on a towel to keep the excess water from damaging the leather strips.

"I told you I would go no further tonight, and I won't," he reminded the half-demon, as he stepped into the bath across from him.

He saw Inuyasha's eyes flick, with some doubtfulness, towards his cock, before studiously ignoring it. Sesshomaru wanted to chuckle at that, but bubbling with laughter would only erode the respect for his authority that he was building, so he kept silent and soaked up the heat and soothing pressure of the water, draping his hair over the edge of the sunken bath so that it wouldn't get too wet.

Inuyasha had taken no such care, and his beautiful tresses were drenched. After he had wrung out the water, Sesshomaru towelled his brother's hair as dry as he could, like he had last night, when they left the bath.

"Can I go back to my room?" Inuyasha asked again, in an echo of the previous evening's events.

Sesshomaru had no intention of letting him go off to cry his eyes out once more, so this time, his answer was: "You will stay here tonight."

He opened his room door only to call for and tell the servant on duty at the end of the corridor that those in charge of keeping his bath hot through the furnace below could leave the fire to die. Then he shut the door and ordered Inuyasha to bed. Sesshomaru pulled Inuyasha's bathrobe off him once he was under the covers, and lay down to sleep naked beside him. The lad again did something ordinarily forbidden to the lovers of the demon lord by turning onto his right side to face away from Sesshomaru; but his brother slid across the sheets and put his left arm over his body so he could hold him close while they slept, not minding his damp hair.

Sesshomaru smiled secretly to feel Inuyasha trying to inch his ass away from him, for the erection that had subsided in the bath was rising again.

 _He doesn't trust me at all,_ thought the demon. _Even though I've given him my word that I won't go further tonight, he still thinks I'll take him._

It amused him to tease Inuyasha, however, so he pressed himself up against the half-demon's firm little bottom while holding him tighter with the arm he had draped over him. He could feel every fibre tensing in his brother's body, until at last Inuyasha made a tiny sound of frustration, almost like a grumble, and squirmed free of his embrace by slipping down under the covers where he closed his mouth snugly over Sesshomaru's cock and pleasured him perfectly until he came with a guttural cry, shooting his cum into the boy's throat, ending his thrusts on a note of utter satisfaction and a feeling that he could lie here in this bed for the rest of his life.

The warm bundle that had worked its way under the covers to please him then wormed back up beside him, and the silvery head slid back up onto the pillows – still making those adorable grumbling noises. Sesshomaru reached for him, planted a kiss between his triangular ear flaps, and pulled him back into his arms.

Inuyasha resisted being held for a few minutes, but eventually his muscles relaxed and he slept, and Sesshomaru was almost able to lie to himself that he was snuggling into his embrace.


	7. Enlightenment

Before dawn, the half-demon prince slipped out of Sesshomaru's bed like a silver-white shadow, pulled on his clothes and left the room. He nodded to the guards, and again to the pair outside his own chambers. As he entered his room and closed his door with a feeling of relief at being left alone at last, he wondered what the guards must think. Sesshomaru had chosen those allowed to work most closely to him for their discretion and loyalty as well as their competence, so these individuals revealed nothing of their thoughts on their faces.

It was fairly common in demon society for siblings to also be lovers and mates. Even parent-child pairings were not unknown, although their incidence was far rarer, and normally discouraged for a variety of historical, social and cultural reasons. While his being with Sesshomaru felt strange and wrong to Inuyasha after so many years in human communities, perhaps it was not unusual to the guards and servants, who were themselves demons and might well be sleeping with their own sisters or brothers.

Besides, to all the individuals permitted to enter this wing, Sesshomaru's long-established readiness to use the servants and occasionally his guests to satisfy his needs meant all kinds of bedtime and bathtime goings-on that they were well accustomed to.

But he was sure no one had been allowed to stay overnight in the royal chambers while he had lived here as a child, and he had gathered from Natsumi and Jaken that that hadn't changed in his years away from the castle. Knowing that Sesshomaru had not only permitted, but wanted, him to stay only increased the pressure on him.

He was a little angry with himself for having allowed his body to be so easily controlled by Sesshomaru last night, and felt embarrassed that he had found the physical sensations not entirely unenjoyable. If it came down to a choice between being locked up, beaten and kicked but never yielding an ounce of himself, and being caressed and kissed but surrendering his spirit and soul, which would he choose, he wondered? Or had he already made that choice?

He wasn't sure, but he knew for certain that it was nice right here and now not to have that maniac of a brother breathing down his neck and pressing up against him while he was trying to rest. He shed his evening clothes, pulled on the sleepwear laid out at the foot of his bed, and sank under his own covers for the hour or so that he had to himself before Natsumi came in.

He had closed his eyes and fallen asleep by the time the racoon demon entered as quietly as she could, so as not to disturb him. But he heard her, and sat up sleepily while she prepared his washcloths and basins before ushering him to the bathroom while she made a carefully considered selection of garments from his wardrobe. Lord Sesshomaru had left Inuyasha's choice of attire to her for the foreseeable future, and she wanted to ensure that the prince would be properly turned out.

When Inuyasha emerged from the bathroom, yawning, she had chosen something in a russet-and-gold design that brought out the colour of his amber-gold eyes. Once it was on, he looked very well in it, and his eyes seemed enormous and even brighter than usual despite their sleepiness, so she decided that it was a good choice, and secured it with a cream-coloured sash to her satisfaction.

He had obviously fallen asleep with wet hair, she thought, as she moved on to combing and tidying his silver mane. Locks of it were clumped together, shining dully, in the way hair did when it was slept on while damp, so she carefully combed out the tangles, separated the strands, and added a light touch of oil to make it gleam in a more pleasing way.

"Thank you," Inuyasha said, when she was done.

"You are most welcome, Your Highness," she replied, her surprise at being thanked shining out through her soft, brown eyes. Lord Sesshomaru never thanked his servants – of course he did not, when they were simply doing their jobs – and she had not expected his brother to be any different. Also, they had not had a good start yesterday, when he had been nearly frantic over his fire rat robe, and the demon lord had had to intervene. But he was calmer now, and this must be more like his normal personality under less trying circumstances.

She liked it that he had not attempted to molest her or grab her in sensitive places, unlike so many of the lords, kings, princes and ambassadors she had served. Natsumi had a lover of her own, another racoon demon who worked in the castle kitchens, and she preferred to be touched in a sexual way only by him, although they both understood that there was no refusing a member of the royal family, or an important guest, who wanted a bit of amusement with a servant – at least not without causing more trouble than the principled stand would be worth.

Lord Sesshomaru was the highest-ranking demon she had ever served – although he was called a lord, that was a reflection of the traditional titles and hierarchy of his dog demon tribe, and everyone in the world knew that he was in fact a king, and that he outranked every other demon and human monarch for several kingdoms in every direction.

He had used Natsumi on occasion, when she had been among his bath servants; but as she had mentioned to Inuyasha yesterday, he had not demanded much from them in fifty years, and she had worked in this castle for only fifty-five. She guessed that he must have assigned her to his rather shy younger brother because she was quiet and discreet and gentler than most of the other servants, and most importantly, had little appreciation for bathtime orgies.

And she could tell that Prince Inuyasha, even in the brief two days she had known him, was not one to get fresh with his attendants just for the fun of it.

...

Sesshomaru reached for Inuyasha at dawn, to find him gone from his bed. He was surprised not to have heard or felt him leave the room, for not only did the demon lord not require sleep for days at a time, but whenever he did sleep, it was very lightly.

That he had remained in slumber while Inuyasha slipped out from under his arm and returned to his own room revealed to him how much he must instinctively trust his little brother not to harm him in any underhanded way. He had no doubt that Inuyasha would cheerfully skewer him through the gut if he ever got the better of him in a fair fight – but deep in his heart and soul, he knew that the half-demon would never resort to ignoble stealth and stabbing his enemies in the back.

Upon confirming with the guards that the prince had returned to his room just before dawn, Sesshomaru washed and dressed and put away his glove of jade in the drawer of his bedside table, and went downstairs to the dining hall for breakfast.

He rarely needed to eat, but this morning, he felt the desire for food. Upon finding out from the servants that they had ready the same kind of rice porridge with minced meat and eggs that Inuyasha had had yesterday, he decided that would do quite well for himself too.

He sat at the head of the table drinking tea until Inuyasha appeared, looking a little sleepy but otherwise very well in a robe brilliant with the hues of burnt earth and muted gold. The female racoon demon who had always been so passive about serving him and his guests with her body had a good eye for colour and dress, and from the moment he brought his half-brother home and assessed his personality and nature, he had decided that Natsumi should see to his grooming needs, as her quiet character would suit him better than that of any of the other fawning servants who voraciously sought favour with their betters in every way they could.

He wanted to get his hands on Inuyasha again and unwrap him from that beautiful robe like a gift to himself. That wet, responsive mouth pleasuring him under the blanket – that taut little ass he couldn't wait to penetrate again… the memory from last night teased him as he ate his porridge and thought about what was under those clothes, and watched Inuyasha spooning food past his lips, his pink tongue flicking out occasionally to catch a drop or lick a morsel off the corner of his mouth.

Inuyasha, meanwhile, was not paying his brother any attention. He had barely looked at Sesshomaru after the moment he had given him his usual respectful half-bow before taking his seat beside him. At first he had avoided meeting Sesshomaru's eye out of embarrassment for the pleasure he had given him last night; but he quickly became distracted by puzzling over something he thought he had noticed was different about the dining hall when he had been here for breakfast yesterday, except that he was so put off by Sesshomaru's stroking his hair then that he had ceased to think about it.

This morning, he tried his best to remember what it was he thought he had observed. And finally, he knew. It was not only the dining hall, he realised now, but also the corridors and rooms he had entered yesterday, that were different. The structure of the great building hadn't changed, but the place looked… brighter. Yes, the windows were open now, and where they were not open, they were paned with clear glass, and the daylight streamed through freely.

He put down his spoon and stopped eating.

In his childhood, the castle had been dark and miserable, all the windows shaded with thick blinds and heavy curtains. His poor mother, who was fully human, had hardly dared to move for fear of stumbling over things she could not see. Too embarrassed to trouble the unfriendly servants to fetch some candles, she had often just sat in her room or tried to make her way outdoors in the daytime for a walk, or to read, if the weather permitted.

Inuyasha, with his half-demon eyes that could see perfectly in the dark, had frequently led her around by the hand when she needed to go to any other part of the castle from the time he could walk.

"Here, Mama," he remembered whispering to her on many occasions. "There's a step here – don't trip over it. The door, Mama – the handle is on your right – it's too high for me to reach."

He would lead her through the rooms as if she were a blind woman, while the servants sniggered and sneered from corners at the useless human female and her worthless half-demon child.

The worst memory now came to him of that stretch of a few months when he was still young and foolish enough to think that if he disassociated himself from his mother, the other demons in the castle would like him better – and he had run away from her many times during those months, once he heard her calling for him to help her get around.

"Inuyasha?" he would hear her call from her room as he slipped quietly away on silent little feet. "Inuyasha, where are you?" And he would hide himself until she had finally left the wing, feeling her way out with one hand on the walls and the other held out in front of her.

Only when he learnt, painfully, that no matter how close or distant he was from his mother, no one would ever treat him better or be kinder to him, and that she alone in all the world loved him even when he had been naughty or had ignored her calls, did he realise how badly he had behaved towards her.

"Mama, I'm so sorry," he had sobbed out to her after learning the truth, and laid his head in her warm lap to cry. "Please forgive me – I'll lead you anywhere you want to go from now, whenever you want."

She had stroked his hair lovingly and whispered to him: "Don't be sorry, my darling – I'm the one who's sorry that I can't protect you as a mother should protect her little one."

She had told him that in the days when his father had been alive, the castle had been bright and airy in the summer, and warm and well-lit in the winter, and she had loved exploring it. But once his father died and she came back here, the servants had draped the windows in black and sealed off the daylight. At first it was meant to mourn the passing of their lord; but as time went by, it became a way of mocking the human wife for whom he had died. And Sesshomaru had not intervened.

Now, as he looked up at the high windows of the dining hall glowing with sunlight, the bitterness in his heart rankled, asking why his mother had had to live ten whole years of her mortal life in darkness.

Sesshomaru observed the change in Inuyasha's demeanour. At least the boy had finished his bowl of porridge this morning and not left it half-eaten as he had yesterday, but it was a small bowl, and he could surely have had another helping, or eaten something else on the table.

"Don't you like the food?" he asked.

"It's lost its taste," came the sullen answer.

"What is the matter?" Sesshomaru questioned, putting his hand over Inuyasha's.

But Inuyasha slipped his hand out from under his brother's and pushed his chair back. "It's time for my lessons. May I go now?"

Sesshomaru was sure that there was still some time to go before his lessons were due to start, but he gave a nod, and Inuyasha rose from the table and left the hall at once.

Sesshomaru noticed that it had been the windows that had seemed to seize Inuyasha's attention while he was finishing his porridge, so after the boy left, he sat back in his chair and looked up at the tall, glass-paned openings himself, trying to see what it was about them that had upset his brother so.

...

"Good decisions made on the battlefield are arrived at in a very different way from good decisions made in peacetime," Jaken told Inuyasha, as they explored and discussed the philosophies of ancient rulers and statespersons. "In battle, if you do not kill the instant you see an opportunity, you will yourself be killed, and your friends will be endangered because they may try to save you, or will be left exposed by your sudden absence. But in talks between kingdoms and states, or when you come up against opposition in discussions, meetings or commercial dealings, never act hastily. Never destroy one you consider an enemy until you have made very certain that there is nothing better to be gained through cooperation with him than by eliminating him."

"But all enemies should be eliminated, or they will destroy you in the end," Inuyasha said.

"Not if you can both benefit by agreeing to terms of peace. Or if instead of destroying an enemy, you instead nurture a loyal future ally. There are many enemies in this world whose destruction would only feed our pride, but not do any other good to ourselves."

"What if others mock you for not killing off your enemy when you could? Or think that it's a sign of weakness in you?" Inuyasha asked.

"First, ask yourself why you consider this kingdom or state an enemy. Has it invaded your lands or threatened your subjects? Has it sent out assassins against you or aided those who have murdered your people? Has it perhaps refused to bow to your superior might when you feel it ought to? Or has it declined to cooperate with you on a matter on which you require its help?

"In cases of invasions, threats and assassination attempts, you are in conditions very close to those of wartime. Even so, be cautious. Has there been a misunderstanding between the states that could be cleared up by trusted ambassadors invested with the right authority? If you can avert war, that must always be done for the sake of the people. But if careful investigations reveal nothing but hostility, aggression and ambition behind the other state's actions, then you must move swiftly and decisively against them to prevent your people and yourself from being slaughtered and seized as slaves. No one will mock you then – unless you lose the war – so you had better be sure before you take them on that you can win. If you do not think you can win by attacking, then move swiftly and decisively to secure your own borders and defend your territory, while exploring means of taking down the head of the opposing force through your own assassins or with help from your allies.

"In the case of a state too proud to bow to your might when it ought to acknowledge you as superior, it would be wise to alter your methods of gaining its respect, for such a state can be a powerful friend in times of need. If it is too proud to bow to you, it will also be too proud to bow to your enemies – unless your enemies seduce it. So you must be the first to complete your act of _sincere_ seduction by treating that state with respect, dealing honourably with it in all things, and making personal contact with its head to demonstrate your interest in growing to understand him or her as an individual ruler. If you earn the respect of the other state, you will also earn the respect of your people when they see what you have achieved.

"In the case of lack of cooperation, you may feel inclined to smite them in arrogance, to show that no one can refuse you without suffering the consequences. But if you required their cooperation to begin with, it means that you need or want something from them. Even if you do not get what you want from them now, perhaps you will again want something from them in the future. If so, destroying them does neither you nor them any good. Instead, the idea is to continue treating them with respect, and to accept their decision not to work with you on this occasion. But show them through your polite communications, and tell them through facts and figures, what they have missed out on for themselves by not cooperating. Instead of being angry and destructive, you can be wise and constructive, and show them exactly why they would want to be your partners on a future occasion, when you may have need of their talent, strength or resources again. Both sides will win, and you will lose no respect from them or your own people."

"I'm sure my father knew all that shit, but it didn't stop him from getting killed," Inuyasha grumbled.

Jaken looked sober as he replied: "Your Highness, what happened to your father was a once-in-a-demon-lifetime event, one that we are likely never to see again. Your late sire was a great ruler, but he had established his kingdom by the sword – a necessary method in those days of chaos. He was a wonderful king to his subjects, but he made numerous enemies beyond his lands – although he was without a doubt the most powerful of all. When they rose in concert against him, none of the usual rules and philosophies applied. He had to face them and destroy them, or he and your brother, your mother and yourself, along with all the people of these lands, would have been enslaved or slaughtered. He took on half of them himself, and most successfully, but at the cost of his life. That was an event we shall probably never see again, and in most normal situations, the guidelines we went through earlier are largely applicable."

Inuyasha heard his kappa tutor out, considered the different ways of thinking that he had summarised from a host of philosophers and generals of war for this lesson, and accepted that _sometimes_ , it was wiser to try and make peace. However, having lived a life as hard as his had been, he could see why he might not _want_ peace in all situations – even off the battlefield.

"Yeah, I can see what you're saying," he murmured, before a sharp gleam came into his eyes and the corners of his mouth twitched up mischievously. "But sometimes, even when you know you're better off cooperating, you're simply dealing with an absolute bastard whose smug face you want to smash in, just for the sake of seeing it smashed – and believe me, that can make you feel pretty damn good too – not that _you_ would know, I suppose, as you're too small to smash anyone in the face!"

"I see you are living up to the name your father gave you," Jaken remarked tartly.

"What? That I was a pup who pierced the night by squalling so damn loudly that it could have woken the dead on the battlefield all around my parents and me?" Inuyasha asked cheekily.

"Well, that is one interpretation. But as I am sure you know, names in our world can be read in more than one way," Jaken told him, softening his tone again. "A yasha is a fierce warrior of the spirit world, so I believe your father chose your name not only for all the noise you were making, but also because it would tell everyone you were a 'fierce dog warrior', or a 'dog who is a fierce protector' – appropriate, certainly, for the son of a great dog demon."

"Right!" Inuyasha exclaimed, grinning and bringing his hands together in a resounding clap. "So that's why I often want to thwack people! My name has predestined my nature!"

Jaken sighed, shook his head, closed his books for the morning, and thanked the gods that his new academic charge would most likely never be required to rule a kingdom.

However, Inuyasha did process the philosophies and ideas he had been exposed to, and concluded that little good was to be achieved by hurting those who had made his mother's stay at the castle miserable. His kind, gentle mother had never spoken a harsh word against the demon servants, or against Sesshomaru, even long after they had left the castle. Neither had she railed against the human relations she sought refuge with after that, who despised her for bearing a demon's son. The spirit of such a loving being would not be made happier to see her child doing harm to those who had tormented her. He knew that her soul must have attained enlightenment long ago, and now perhaps she would light the way for the son who had guided her through ten years of darkness.

So he put his bitterness aside and calmed his simmering anger. When he ran into Sesshomaru along one of the passageways near his office, he was able to bow and utter a quiet, formal apology for leaving the dining hall so abruptly that morning.

Sesshomaru, who had through much private contemplation figured out that his little brother had been upset by the windows looking so bright now when they had always been draped, and deduced that it had something to do with his mother, had dug about his father's old room until he found a hairpin that his human stepmother had worn, and he now pressed it into Inuyasha's hand, saying: "I thought you might like to keep this."

He kissed him on the forehead and reminded him not to be late for dinner, then walked away before the boy needed to hide his tears from him.


	8. Resignation

What should he do?

When he had first returned to the castle, he had believed he could obediently play whatever role Sesshomaru imposed on him until the demon lord found him tiresomely dull. After all, the lord of these lands had no shortage of lovers and servants who were only too happy to delight him in every way, so Inuyasha imagined he would easily become another replaceable face and body. When that happened, and Sesshomaru found a new source of amusement, he might forget his threat against the village, and his younger brother could leave and never come back.

But trying to passively assume that role proved almost impossible. For Sesshomaru demanded exposure and responsiveness, and would get it however he wanted, whether it was by finding his ticklish spots or working his fingers into him, and only he, Inuyasha, had been left devastated thus far.

He had then considered behaving atrociously so that Sesshomaru would find him anything but pleasing, and throw him out. But having as a child seen how his brother punished others and further restricted their freedom for opposing him, he doubted that misbehaving would help him escape.

Another possibility was to challenge Sesshomaru to a duel and kill him. But he had a strong suspicion that Sesshomaru's combat skills were far superior, and that taking such a step would mean not only the premature termination of his own life, but also plenty of trouble for the innocent villagers who had sheltered him. He refused to consider assassinating him. He was not made that way; he could never stab someone in the back. Besides, Sesshomaru seemed in his own twisted way to be working at being kind to him. However warped and inadequate those attempts might be after all the suffering of years gone by, they nonetheless represented some manner of effort, and Inuyasha found that he could not repay a version of kindness with violence.

Worst of all, being back in this castle made him feel more often than he should as if he were a child again, helpless and lost, unable to determine how to behave around his brother. It seemed impossible to act in any correct way.

For the time being, he opted to go along in the main with the demon lord's whims – at the very least, it would mean that he might not be watched so closely, and that his freedom would not be curtailed.

He was thus determined not to keep Sesshomaru waiting again on this night. His brother had sent word that he would not be done with his work until some three hours after dinner. So Inuyasha prevented himself from dozing off by staying only a while in his chambers and looking at his mother's old hair ornament, then went next door long before Sesshomaru was due back upstairs.

When the guards raised not the least objection to his entering the room while their master was not in it, that was when Inuyasha truly believed what Jaken had said about his having as much freedom of movement as Sesshomaru did within the grounds. No one else would have been permitted to enter Sesshomaru's bedroom as he pleased. Servants who needed to be there every day to clean the place were watched like prey by one another and by the guards, who would keep the doors open and observe their every move until they were done with their work. Even the demon lord's personal attendants could enter only while he was in.

Thus far, it seemed his brother was at last treating him as befitted his birth, after so much neglect. The problem was that he was not permitted to leave. Inuyasha realised this was not unusual for a prince of his rank and years, for he was considered very young in the demon world, and young nobles of his age were rarely allowed out of their immediate family territories unaccompanied by their parents or chaperones. He resented it so strongly only because he had been his own master for too long after his mother's death. For his brother to house him as he ought to have done a long time ago thus felt to him like imprisonment rather than privilege; and to have threatened the lives of his human friends to bring him home was unforgivable.

He closed the door behind him and took a good look round the enormous bedroom. Each time he had been here before, he had been too worried about what Sesshomaru was about to do to really notice the room's features and contents.

It was a space slightly bigger than his own bedroom, but with less furniture. As one entered, the great bed was on the left, while the doorway to the bathroom was set into the far end of the wall on the right. The wardrobe and a large full-length mirror rested against the closer end of the left wall, beside some chests and cabinets, and near a clothes stand. Heavy chairs and a round marble-topped table were positioned near the windows, visually separated from the bathroom entrance facing them by a set of elegant standing screens of carved rosewood with panels of embroidered white silk. Along the right wall, almost directly in line with the door, but a good twenty feet into the room, were a writing desk and chair, screened off from view from the doorway by another rosewood-and-silk set of folding panels.

The openwork carving of the standing screens and the translucency of their silk panels offered security in the sense that it would be impossible for an intruder to conceal himself behind one of them; but the fineness of the carving and the elaborate embroidery made them suitable enough for visually dividing the room into different areas.

Inuyasha had no interest in prying into the contents of the chests or the writing desk's drawers, but he did open the wardrobe doors to find that Sesshomaru had far fewer clothes in it than he had ordered for Inuyasha's use. Many of the robes were mostly white, the colour he had known Sesshomaru to favour from the time he had lived here in his earliest years. Some were deep blue or gold. Presumably, the demon lord had other outfits for the most formal occasions, or for battle and physical training, stored elsewhere.

He closed the wardrobe and sat down at the marble-topped table near the windows for a while, staring out at the night sky and finding the moon thin but glowing bright, before wandering over to the bed and sitting at the edge of the mattress closer to the door. It was the side of the bed he had slept on last night.

Just then, Sesshomaru came in. Inuyasha stood up and put on his passively obedient face. He thought the demon lord looked pleased to find him waiting here, but he couldn't be sure, for he had always found his brother's face and eyes hard to read. As Sesshomaru began to remove his outer robe, Inuyasha stepped up, went around him, and slipped it off him simply because it was the right thing to do for his lord and older brother when no servants were around.

In all his experiences in this bedroom thus far, garments were shed only to be dropped to the floor and left to lie where they had fallen until picked up by a servant. He wondered briefly how Sesshomaru would react if he simply opened his fingers and let the robe fall to the ground. But having looked about earlier and seen the clothes stand, he thought better of it and carried the white-and-silver outer robe across the room to drape it over that item of furniture. He felt Sesshomaru's eyes on his back every step of the way, and though he held his head up when he made the return journey, he dropped his own eyes slightly to avoid meeting his intense gaze.

When he stood before him again, his brother cupped his left cheek with his hand and stroked the skin lightly with his thumb. Inuyasha tried not to stare into those hypnotic golden eyes.

"I didn't have much time to talk to you at dinner," Sesshomaru said unexpectedly. "I would have liked to hear more about what you did today."

Also unexpectedly, he led Inuyasha away from the bed, to the table near the windows. He sat down and indicated that Inuyasha should take a seat, but the half-demon remained standing.

"What does it matter what I did today?" the boy asked. His tone of voice was not rude despite the words he used; he sounded resigned instead.

"It matters to me," Sesshomaru replied, not liking the passive way in which his brother spoke.

"No it doesn't," Inuyasha said, in his unique way of combining politeness with resentment. "You didn't care for two hundred years what I did – in fact you wished I had never been born – so I don't see why you should start caring now. You brought me here for a specific purpose, so just get on with it."

He began to remove his clothes to make his point, shedding his sash, jacket and undershirts, and was undoing the ties of his trousers when Sesshomaru's right hand shot out, seized his arm to stop him, and pulled him swiftly into his lap. Inuyasha found his bottom firmly planted on Sesshomaru's right thigh.

The demon lord kept him there with his right arm round his waist, and his left hand holding his chin to keep his face turned towards him, although Inuyasha still refused to meet his eyes.

"Inuyasha," he said his name, but the half-demon kept his eyes averted.

Sesshomaru released his chin and let the fingers of his free hand trail down his brother's neck and along the length of his collarbone. Inuyasha's breath quickened as a shiver ran through his body and spent itself in his belly.

"I will not deny that I once wished you had never been born, for I regarded you as a lasting symbol of our father's weakness," Sesshomaru murmured in a low, calming voice. "Neither will I deny that I brought you here after I saw how beautiful you had grown, because I wanted you in my bed. But I told you that I didn't bring you here only to fuck you, and that was no lie. I want you here to grow and learn as a prince should grow and learn, and I want to know who you are in every way I can."

"I don't see the point," Inuyasha muttered with as much indifference as he could with the demon lord's fingers tracing patterns on his bare chest.

"The point is that you are my brother, and you are not a symbol of our father's weakness as I had first thought, and I left you alone for too long after your mother's passing. It was an oversight," Sesshomaru said.

Inuyasha felt his anger rising at those words. Although he tried to hold it back, he could not prevent the merest trace of sarcasm from entering his voice. "Oversight?" he echoed. "Has the perfect Lord Sesshomaru ever had an oversight?"

Sesshomaru was not pleased at that, but he was prepared to give in a little to keep the evening from degenerating into an unpleasant battle when all he wanted was the half-demon in his arms and in his bed, without any blood spilt or furniture wrecked in the process. So he said stiffly: "I am not too proud to admit that it was an oversight – and that it was _my_ oversight, and the time has come to put that right."

"Whether _I_ like it or not," Inuyasha responded coldly.

"That is correct," Sesshomaru said matter-of-factly. "Whatever our history, you are not of age, and I have every right to keep you with me regardless of how you may feel about it, although it is not my intention to make your time here miserable. On the contrary, I hope you will find that you can benefit greatly from all I can offer you if you choose to learn from it. I hope you will even find a good deal of it enjoyable."

His fingers sought Inuyasha's lips. He traced their rosy outlines and pouty fullness, and slipped the tip of a finger just inside his mouth.

Inuyasha, thinking of where those fingers had been on previous nights, and remembering all that his mother and the two wise sisters at the village had taught him over the years about cleanliness and health, wondered just what he was ingesting each time his brother molested him.

"I've washed my hands well," Sesshomaru said, reading his thoughts from the expression on his face. "You were raised by humans, and I know what they have taught you because their fragile bodies fall victim to all kinds of illnesses if they do not watch where they put their hands and mouths. Demons are far more resistant to disease, regardless of what we ingest and do – but even though I could see fifty years ago that you were extremely strong for a half-demon, stronger than many full demons, I made certain to study the needs of humans so that I would not harm your health, in case your human side proved more dominant. I know now that it is not, and you are almost as resilient as any full demon, but I shall still take care not to harm you or upset your long-held beliefs."

A tiny furrow creased Inuyasha's brow as he struggled with the strangeness of hearing Sesshomaru try to tell him that he cared about his health.

The demon continued: "I used the jade finger gloves last night not to abuse you, but to prepare you for more to come while protecting you from my claws, and I would never put those pieces of jade into your mouth unless they were thoroughly scrubbed in hot water before that. Neither will I expect you to pleasure me with your mouth or tongue after I have taken you and before I have thoroughly washed. Penetrating you that way is something I have not done yet, but I intend to do just that once you are ready."

Inuyasha knew his face was turning pink, and he could not meet Sesshomaru's eyes, but he realised to his disgust that even as he shuddered to think of everything else the demon lord wished to do with him and to him, he did appreciate the care his brother had taken to look into what would not damage his well-being, and shield his body from harm. Servants and slaves at the mercy of cruel masters had little or no recourse however they were abused, but he was being treated as a prince in his elder brother's care, and Sesshomaru seemed at least to be sane, rational and reasonable, and not gratuitously cruel.

The moment those thoughts came to his mind, he asked himself when he had lowered his expectations so far as to actually feel somewhat grateful that the loathed demon brother who had power over him was behaving rationally while violating him, instead of hating him for violating him at all.

"I do want to know all I can about you," Sesshomaru whispered to him. "So the next time I ask you how your day was, perhaps you will not object so coldly to telling me. I'll let it go for now, since we seem to have moved on to other topics, and I don't suppose you will be keen on relating to me what you learnt with Jaken while I am exploring your body and preparing it further to receive me?"

Inuyasha felt his muscles tense even as his limbs seemed to go weak, as if his physical self was unsure whether it ought to leap up from Sesshomaru's lap and flee to the other end of the room while swearing at him, or to sit there like a rag doll in resignation.

Sesshomaru chose a third path, which was to work his fingers into Inuyasha's hair and draw his face towards his to kiss his mouth deeply, almost passionately, although Inuyasha was sure that passion was not an emotion his brother, with his cold mien, was capable of experiencing. Still, the depth of that kiss almost fooled him… almost felt like it meant… something tender rather than twisted.

How could he have got into this state in such a short time of a few days, to be reduced to caring about whether his brother cared for him or not?

Sesshomaru was the one who broke the kiss, and Inuyasha caught a flash of what looked again like tenderness in his eyes as they drew apart. But he forgot it quickly as Sesshomaru stood, raising him along with himself, and steered him towards the bed with a hand on his back.

It hardly mattered whether he cared, Inuyasha thought then, as long as he kept up this nightly nonsense which left the younger of the two brothers shattered by the weakness of his own body, which would insist on caving to the touch of the elder.

Beside the bed, Sesshomaru began to undo the ties of Inuyasha's trousers, which he had stopped the half-demon himself from unknotting earlier.

"You should have just let me remove them over there – they're coming off now anyway, aren't they?" Inuyasha muttered.

Standing behind him, teasing at the ties with his arms around his waist, Sesshomaru murmured: "The difference is that this is being done with pleasure and care, and not with the cold briskness you seemed to think fitting for your nights with me."

Inuyasha coloured, shivering to feel Sesshomaru's breath on his right ear, and the sleekly muscled body at his back. The trousers came off, and soon, the jade glove came out, along with other implements wrapped in cloth, and he was on the mattress again, on his hands and knees this time. He felt nervous about what was to come, but his body was certainly interested in what was going on, for his hardening member dangled between his thighs, bereft of the warm pillow it had had before to push itself deeply into. Sesshomaru wasn't going to let him get off easily tonight.

The demon lord, who remained fully clothed, wrapped one arm round his brother's hips to pull him back a little while pushing down lightly on the back of his neck, prompting Inuyasha to drop his forehead to the bedcovers, cradled between his own hands which rested palms-down on the fabric.

It felt no less uncomfortable to him on this night than the night before when Sesshomaru's jade-clad fingers – first one, then another – entered him, but his brother did not rush, and he was liberal with the oil. Just as Inuyasha was getting sufficiently used to the rhythmic, gentle thrusts of the sheathed digits not to whimper or moan, Sesshomaru produced a new tool which had hitherto been covered with the cloth.

From his more-or-less upside-down perspective with his triangular ears pressed to the covers, Inuyasha's eyes widened as he saw his brother unwrap another piece of jade –as smoothly polished as the finger gloves, but solid rather than hollow, and considerably larger than each of the finger pieces.

Risking Sesshomaru's wrath, he raised his head from the bedcovers and looked around at the demon lord as he withdrew his fingers and untied the glove.

"Did I say you could raise your head or turn to look at me?" Sesshomaru asked evenly.

Inuyasha opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it, and dropped his head to the bedcovers again, squeezing his eyes shut, for he could tell this was going to hurt. But Sesshomaru had prepared him well, because when the oiled jade first pressed against him, he thought he was going to split open, until it actually entered him, and he found he could take it. It wasn't as thick as the actual article still in Sesshomaru's trousers, but he figured that as this thing inside him was literally rock-hard and had absolutely no give, he might perhaps survive when Sesshomaru finally decided to fuck him.

Nonetheless, it was a fairly large jade object, and with what must have been only two inches inside him, already made him feel quite filled up. He made a small noise in reaction to the discomfort, and cried out softly as Sesshomaru pressed it in a bit deeper. He tried to pull away from it, but the dominant figure in this latest bedroom tableau held him back with a hand over his abdomen.

"You're doing very well," he said. "Does it feel uncomfortable?"

"Yes!" Inuyasha gasped through his gritted teeth.

"But I trust it isn't causing you pain?"

"No," he reluctantly admitted.

"It gets easier with time," he remarked.

"Like _you_ would know," Inuyasha snapped tightly, thinking that Sesshomaru himself had obviously never been on the receiving end of an obscenely shaped piece of deep-green stone.

Sesshomaru actually made a throaty sound that might have been a chuckle, as he replied: "Every lover, servant or slave I have used has told me that it gets easier with time."

"Well the fucking fawning, spineless idiots you grace with your attentions would say anything you wanted to hear!" Inuyasha snarled. "I'm not like any of them!"

His outburst earned him an extra-hard thrust of the phallus, which made him smother a yell in the bedcovers; but it also earned him a gentle stroking of a clawed hand down his left side and lightly over his stomach, pushing upwards until he had raised his upper body on his hands so that his head was off the covers and he was on all fours again. That hand then moved down until it reached his cock and grasped it, provoking from him a sharp intake of breath that he released as if it were a sigh.

"No, you're not like any of them, my little brother," Sesshomaru said, planting a kiss on his spine. "You're an unpredictable little firecracker, and I know you will never say what you think I want to hear just to please me, and _that_ pleases me more than you know."

He whimpered as Sesshomaru's hand began to work his erect organ, stroking back towards his thighs at the same time as he pressed the phallus in, and stroking back out towards the tip in tandem with drawing the phallus out, repeatedly, until Inuyasha was keening mindlessly, straining towards a climax that his demon brother wouldn't allow him to reach because he was keeping his strokes and thrusts just fast enough to leave him frantic with overwhelming sensations, and only just slow enough to prevent him from tipping over the edge.

"You may not believe it, but it pleases me to give you pleasure, as much as it pleases me to receive it from you," Sesshomaru said in a voice strained with arousal from watching the half-demon writhe under his hands and listening to his delightfully helpless, whimpering cries. "Do you want this, Inuyasha? Tell me – do you want this?"

"No!" Inuyasha pushed the word out of his mouth, a remnant of his earlier thoughts that he should loathe his brother for violating him, but the cry was marked with uncertainty.

"Do you want this?" Sesshomaru questioned again, more aggressively and urgently, speeding up his strokes.

And Inuyasha wanted release, desperately wanted it, so the word came grudgingly at last: "Yes..."

"What was that?" Sesshomaru demanded, not letting up.

"Yes–" he gasped. "Yes, Sesshomaru!"

The demon lord increased his pace, and increased it further still, till Inuyasha climaxed with a sharp, short howl that might almost have been a sob of despair and relief, shooting his seed over the bedcovers beneath him.

Sesshomaru continued working him until he had nothing further to yield, then he slid the phallus out of him and released him. Inuyasha would have collapsed onto the bed heedless of the wet, sticky streak glistening on it, had Sesshomaru not dropped the column of jade to the carpet and caught him round the waist to move him to a dryer part of the mattress.

Completely spent, and knowing he had surrendered something of himself he had not wished to give up, he lay there limp, unseeing, almost hearing and feeling nothing other than Sesshomaru's arms encircling him fully, his silk-clad body sliding up against his back; his lips pressing kisses into his hair, his neck, his shoulders; and his voice whispering soft, meaningless nothings into his furry ears that somehow meant everything and soothed him like a wordless lullaby.


	9. Lessons to Learn

Lord Sesshomaru had lived far too long without a soul near him who had the authority to tell him what to do – his father had been dead these two hundred years, and his mother had visited his kingdom only twice in that time. As one both powerful and arrogant, he was rarely in the habit of looking deeply within his self-centred demon heart, or trying to comprehend the aspects of his character that he preferred to ignore.

So he did not understand why he caught Inuyasha in his arms to stop him from falling onto the seed he had spilled. He had dropped countless slaves and lovers into the messy aftermath of bedroom and bathroom activity, after which he would casually or coldly order them to clean themselves up, depending on his mood – sometimes making them change the sheets too – before ejecting them from his room, occasionally with instructions to carry the soiled bed linen to the laundry wing on their way back to their own quarters.

He had intended to take Inuyasha tonight after carefully preparing him, but all he wanted now was to caress him and try to soothe him, once he saw that the boy was drained and distressed by his own capitulation.

Although he had brought his half-brother home with the intention of educating him, and giving him the resources and upbringing proper for a prince who shared his blood, he had also known that the first and main thing he wanted was to have him in his bedchamber to do with as he pleased. He had thought to use him as he liked, but from the moment he had heard him crying in his own room, a host of disturbing memories from their past had risen to trouble his heart and modify the full extent of his intended actions. And when Inuyasha had started to take his own clothes off briskly as if he were a prostitute to be paid for his time and services, Sesshomaru had felt that pain in his heart again, and he'd had to stop the boy because what he wanted was pleasure and seduction, not businesslike coldness.

Here he was now, embracing the half-demon and revelling in his wonderful scent. He smelt like sex and warmth, intimacy and family, and something gloriously like the demon lord himself while being quite unlike him, which made him seem both comfortingly known and excitingly exotic. Dog demons are largely influenced by their noses, and to Lord Sesshomaru, this half-demon had a maddeningly appealing scent that he could not get enough of. He wanted to push his nose more deeply into his hair, his skin and everywhere on his body, but restrained those impulses because, to his surprise, he felt he had done quite enough to the boy on this night.

As Inuyasha emerged from his state of sleepiness to find himself still clasped against his brother's body, he tried to pull away. Sesshomaru tightened his hold to impart the message that he was not going anywhere, relaxing his arms only when Inuyasha started turning around in his embrace rather than trying to get away.

The boy's countenance was stoic by the time he faced him, the anger he had displayed earlier now concealed, as if he had decided that he had best go through whatever unpleasantness he seemed to think he would have to put up with, as quickly as possible.

Calmly, but with not the least hint of eagerness, he moved a hand down and began to touch Sesshomaru's groin through his clothes, while his other hand started drawing loose the ties of the demon lord's garments. Sesshomaru stopped him, grasping his wrists and returning them to chest level, getting in response a querying look from the half-demon.

"Don't you want me to…?" Inuyasha asked. "That is what you were waiting for me to come round for, isn't it?"

The inner discomfort that Sesshomaru had been aware of like the pain of a glassy shard needling his heart for two days reared up once more as he saw the dull, weary look in his brother's golden eyes. Something in those eyes bordered on self-disgust. Sesshomaru wanted to kill that contaminating dullness and revive the flashing sparks of life that had first seized his attention.

"No," he told Inuyasha. "I was not waiting for you recover sufficiently to pleasure me."

"So what do you want? Are you going to take me now, is that it?"

"No," Sesshomaru said firmly, although the erection in his trousers demanded otherwise. "Not yet, not now."

"What then?"

"I want to lie here with you for a while, is that all right?"

A curious warmth arose in the demon lord's heart when he saw that those molten-gold eyes widened a shade and a tiny spark flared.

"Mmm," was the little murmur that issued from the lad's throat – it might have been a sound of agreement, or a hint of a question – but it was a contented enough sound that accompanied the cessation of attempted action, which Sesshomaru found satisfactory enough.

After some moments of stillness and silence, Inuyasha closed his eyes and slept again, which gave Sesshomaru the opportunity to study his face as he had last night, when he entered the young prince's room prepared to be angry with him for keeping him waiting, only to discover that his childlike look when in the world of dreams of was so very worth gazing upon for its beauty and peacefulness.

But it would not do to be caught staring devotedly at him as if he were one of those silly, besotted monarchs easily swayed by his subjects, so when the boy stirred after some time and showed signs of waking more fully, Sesshomaru drew an expressionless shutter over his eyes while keeping his voice gentle, and told him that if he wished to, he could bathe before turning in for the night.

Inuyasha went to the bathroom, but Sesshomaru did not follow, leaving him to use the bath in private while giving himself a moment alone. For perhaps the first time since his father had still been around to guide him in the matter of how to live his life, he took a searching look inwards, and after much probing and opening of the long-closed doors of the soul, he discovered a tiny voice that told him he would derive no satisfaction from taking his brother until he was sure that Inuyasha wanted him to.

He had never needed nor wanted permission to take whomever he chose within his own castle, in any way he chose, desiring only to fulfil his urges whenever they made themselves known – and they had frequently made themselves known, encouraging him to lead a life of cold, calculated debauchery that he disguised as a manner of expressing his absolute power over his people.

The truth was that from the time he had understood that his father could not love him as he hoped he would, a painful ache had opened up like a wound in his soul, and grown into a gaping hole of need and anger after the former demon lord had perished. It was a weakness, Sessshomaru thought, one that must be concealed and patched up so that it would not conquer him.

Every satisfaction he desired that could numb the ache for a while and fill the gaping hole with a little more dirt seemed to help. Thus, for years, he had proudly and obsessively quelled that pain and emptiness through dominance, sex and game-playing in his personal life – although he had the sense to keep such behaviour out of the principles with which he governed his kingdom. Within his own castle, he had never cared to pay attention to others' feelings, save where it was useful for the purposes of gaining greater power over them or amusing himself with how easily he could read others when he chose, and thus control them by knowing them.

But he discovered now that forcing himself on Inuyasha would give him no pleasure beyond the immediate and, as past experience had taught him, temporary gratification of the act of sex. From this delicious half-demon, whose wide golden eyes and emotional character were so very like his father's, he desired more than immediate satisfaction.

Something scratching at his heart seemed to hint that if he could only find the right way to bind his brother to himself, the aching chasm in his soul could begin to heal. He had believed that keeping him here by force would do the trick; then that idea had quickly been discarded, and he had turned to behaving kindly to him while compelling his delectable little body to learn pleasure at his hands and teach it to need his touch; but that too was beginning to feel less than right.

He couldn't take Inuyasha tonight.

As he meditated on these things, he absent-mindedly rose from the bed and stripped off the soiled, topmost layer of the covers before realising that he was performing a servant's task, for perhaps the third time in his life since the half-demon came home. But never mind – the layer was off and balled up into a bundle, which he dropped onto the floor – it meant that he wouldn't need to summon a menial whose presence would doubtless make his brother self-conscious.

He ceased his introspective thoughts when Inuyasha came out of the bathroom looking and smelling clean and warm and sleepy again, wrapped in his bathrobe and pausing for a moment by the bed, uncertain whether Sesshomaru wanted him to remain in this room or return to his own.

He steered him towards the bed before removing himself to the bathroom, where he cleaned his jade implements and steeped his body in the hot water. He liked knowing that Inuyasha had been here before him, whereas in the past, from the time he was no longer a child, he had been spoilt enough never to have to use a bath that anyone else had used before he stepped into it.

He spent a good hour soaking in the water, relieving the tension that had accumulated from bringing Inuyasha to his shattering climax while not giving his own arousal an outlet. He briefly debated the wisdom of satisfying himself while in the bath, before concluding that he could restrain himself a little longer.

When he returned to the bedroom, he found Inuyasha fast asleep, curled into a ball under the covers on the side of the bed nearer the door. As he slipped in beside him, he lifted the covers a little to see if he was wearing anything. When he found that he was not, Sesshomaru wondered whether he should feel pleased to have easy access to his body if he should want it, or irked that it would now be so much harder to keep a lid on his instinct to pin the boy down and fuck him right into the bedframe.

Worse, he did not require sleep on this night, so he could not escape into oblivion by closing his eyes and drifting off.

In the end, he got out of bed, pulled on a light dressing gown, and sat at his desk for the rest of the night crafting letters to every head of state, diplomat, tribe leader, minister and casual contact to whom he owed a reply of any kind. He even wrote to his mother, penning a formally worded, stiff account of an unimportant matter involving some of her clothes and belongings, which she had left behind after her last visit, and which he wanted to know if he should send to her kingdom or discard, as some of them seemed to be attracting pests after fifty years in storage.

By the time he was done, the merest hint of morning light was creeping over the horizon. The demon lord dressed himself quietly, sent word to his personal attendants that they should not bother coming to his chambers as he was going to his office earlier than usual, and took one more look at the cherubic features of his still-sleeping brother and unwilling lover before leaving his room for the day.

...

Inuyasha awoke alone in his brother's room, surprised to find that he had been left unmolested in his sleep. He was quite sure Sesshomaru had not touched him after his bath – he would have woken up if he had.

He wanted to believe that it was because he was already getting tired of him after three days of amusing himself with him. But it hadn't felt like that. Sesshomaru still hadn't taken him, and he was quite sure the demon lord had wanted to last night, but had been holding back for some unfathomable reason of his own.

It was strange also that he had simply wished to hold him – it had felt quite soothing to be embraced and stroked and whispered to that way, after the humiliation of having his body exposed and toyed with as if it were the playing field of an elaborate game. It confused him. He did not know how long this could go on before he could either escape or be discarded, but he hoped that he would still retain his sanity and some small measure of self-respect by the time that came.

He pulled on his clothes and went back to his own room, where he tinkered about, wide awake, after sleeping so well the night before. When Natsumi came in, it was to find the prince playing a game of marbles with himself, sprawled on his tummy on the woven silk-and-wool carpet, scattering the colourful glass spheres in every direction by aiming and throwing other marbles at them.

He looked up sheepishly at her, for it was a child's game; but since his mother's death, he had had very little opportunity to be a child, and this took him back to his early years. He started to pick up the marbles, but Natsumi hurried over and tried to do the work for him.

"Your Highness, you shouldn't be doing this yourself," she said anxiously. "Please either leave it to me, or let me call one of the cleaning servants to do it later."

"It's not a problem, Natsumi," he said, continuing to gather them. " _I'm_ the one who made this mess. Besides, I've been picking up after myself all my life. No one other than my mother ever picked up after me!"

"But you're living here now, and you mustn't think that I, or any of the others who are allowed to serve you directly, would hesitate to do anything for you. We wouldn't be doing our jobs otherwise, and wouldn't earn our pay."

"Does Sesshomaru pay you well?" Inuyasha asked curiously.

"He pays fair wages," Natsumi replied as she took the marbles from him and put them away in the inlaid wooden box they belonged to before heading for the wardrobe to choose the clothes the prince would wear for the day. "Those who carry out better work for him, or serve him more closely, are paid more. We who save carefully and don't squander our money have a good amount left over after meeting our own needs to send back to our families at home – and since all our meals and basic clothing are provided for, we do have more than enough to spare. Lord Sesshomaru hasn't kept any slaves here for about a hundred years either, from what I understand – everyone who works here is employed, not owned. I used to be a slave to a terrifying spider-demon ruler, but one day I was sold, and eventually given as a gift to Lord Sesshomaru's household. He freed me and employed me."

"So he's not a mean old monster," Inuyasha muttered, although he had already gathered from Jaken and from seeing the way Sesshomaru interacted with his staff and officers that his brother was a good leader to his own people, and a terror to everyone who went against him.

"He's rather cold, and he does use his servants and guests very intimately, but he isn't a monster except to traitors, and those who break castle rules by stealing or brawling, or being rude to important guests – the head staff know very well that servants who behave that way are to be punished harshly and dismissed at once. Lord Sesshomaru does not tolerate indiscipline."

"I have no doubt of that," the half-demon remarked.

He could be as good a leader as he pleased, thought Inuyasha, but to his younger brother, he was still the uncaring, intimidating presence of his childhood who had turned into a perverted tyrant in the bedchambers of his present life.

...

They had a quiet breakfast together, during which neither spoke much, the air awkward with the tension of Inuyasha trying to figure out why his brother had not touched him again during the night, and Sesshomaru wondering how best to seduce the boy. Then Inuyasha had gone for his lessons, and Sesshomaru had headed to his office as usual.

However, clearing all his correspondence the night before – even that which he had not intended to respond to because he thought the recipients unworthy of a formal reply – left the demon lord with much less to do during the day than he might otherwise have had on his plate.

So in the middle of the morning, he strolled over to the library where Inuyasha and Jaken were. He did not make his presence known, choosing to stand in the open-sided passageway-cum-balcony near the door and listen to what was going on within. His scent and demon spirit-energy were all over this castle, so Inuyasha would not immediately pick up the fact that he was nearby, while Jaken had too poor a sense of smell to detect his presence even when they were beyond the castle walls.

"What the hell is the point of learning how to word a proper thank-you note?" Inuyasha's voice was easily picked up by Sesshomaru's sharp ears. "If you've gotta say thanks, just say it – what do you mean there's a form and style to follow?"

"Your Highness," Jaken said in that forced, extra-quavery voice he used when he was trying to remain patient long after he had lost his patience. "I did not say that you had to follow a fixed format for every letter; I said that certain elements must be in a letter of thanks if it is to mean something to its recipient. Regardless of whether you wish to thank someone for a small gift, or a useful service rendered, or for something immense they have done for you, and regardless of how long or short your actual note is to be, it must achieve the following: it must at the very start thank the addressee specifically for what it is you wish to express your appreciation for…"

"What if your addressee has done something highly secret for you, and putting anything in writing would be incriminating? You know, like, 'Dear Black-faced Cook with the Singed Hair Whatever Your Name Is, I am writing to express my thanks for adding those large doses of laxative herbs to my tutor's soup at my request, because it meant that I got to skip lessons three mornings in a row. Your Great Half-demon Prince, Inuyasha'."

In spite of his dignity being at stake, Jaken chuckled for a second before he remembered to squawk with outrage. "Your Highness, please be serious! Being foolish enough to ask someone else to do something you wish to keep hidden is most unwise, for it leaves you open to those who may wish to take advantage of such secret knowledge at your expense!"

"Hey, you were just talking yesterday about how you may need to send out secret spies and assassins against your enemies if you can't finish them off on the field of battle! What about that, then?"

"Your Highness, one _obviously_ does not send letters of thanks to spies and assassins. One sends only those spies and assassins that one can either trust, or who do not know whom they have been sent by, or whom one can tidily get rid off after the deed is done. As for black-faced cooks with singed hair, one certainly should not ask them to do anything at all other than cook what they are supposed to cook. They sound most untrustworthy for doing anything else!"

"Yeah, they sure are, especially if they're the one I saw stepping on you 'by accident' near the kitchens yesterday afternoon!"

"Back to what I was saying _before_ I was interrupted..." the kappa tutor growled indignantly – if such a high-pitched sound could be termed a growl. "The next element that a letter of thanks must contain is a personal expression of appreciation relevant to what you are thanking the addressee for, to say how much you like what has been given to you, how useful you find it, or how much it has helped you. The details of this element will naturally vary with the nature of what has been given to or done for you."

"You mean something like: 'Dear King of That Useless Kingdom in the North That We Should Have Squished Had We Found It Worth Our While To Do So, Thank you so much for the pair of furry and bejewelled bedroom slippers that obviously used to belong to your housekeeper. The silver pig hair really matches my gorgeous tresses, the cheap resin stones totally match my sparkling gold eyes, and they keep my beautiful toes so warm when I need to get up at night to pee'?"

"Something like that, but without the sarcasm, vulgarities, colloquialisms or the self-praise," Jaken grumbled, before continuing with this most trying etiquette lesson. "The final required element in a letter of thanks is an acknowledgement of the person's thoughtfulness, or sacrifice, whichever is relevant, and how such thoughtfulness or sacrifice reflects the person's good character, or compassion, or reliability, whichever is most appropriate – no further amusing examples from you, please, Your Highness."

"Aww…" Inuyasha said in mock-disappointment.

Sesshomaru listened to that much before the appearance of a housekeeping servant along the open corridor leading to the balcony forced him to move on, to appear as if he had merely been strolling along the passageway, and not doing just what he had been doing – eavesdropping on his brother's lessons.

The demon lord walked away from the library, astonished by Inuyasha's mischievousness and ease when alone with his tutor. He had never known his half-brother to be so playful, or to have so much to say. He had only known the intimidated child who had crept silently around the castle for ten years, glimpses of the wild warrior who had lived a hard life alone for so long, and now the subdued, erotically beautiful youth who coped with whatever Sesshomaru did to him.

He did not know this cheeky creature with the lively voice and disdain for etiquette, who had almost made him, Sesshomaru, the demon lord, chuckle as he heard him annoying his tutor. He suddenly wished to know that individual, to hold a proper conversation with him, to see him smile and listen to his laughter, and even to have him telling his awful jokes as he lay beside him in bed. He realised that what he needed, much more than yet another lover, was a true companion – and that Inuyasha might well be his best hope for one.

Sesshomaru had not the least idea at this point in time how he was to meet this side of his half-brother that he had never been introduced to. But he had a most uncomfortable suspicion that forcing his attentions on him in the bedroom was not the right way to go about it.


	10. Sanctuary

After his morning lessons, Inuyasha wandered into the gardens enclosed within the courtyards of the castle. While the landscaped beauty of the greenery around him was pleasing to the eye, it did not soothe his soul as much as he hoped it would, for it was all painstakingkly designed, with plants chosen for their exotic nature or striking looks to suit gardens of different themes. Most of the ponds had been artificially created too.

But his mother had liked to walk in the gardens in the past, whenever she had had an opportunity to go outdoors safely, so he found some comfort in planting his feet on ground that she had once loved to cross. As he emerged from one garden filled with red flowers which stood at the very end of the ground between two wings of the castle, he looked into the distance and spotted a patch of natural wood in the distance.

His heart lifted, for he had lived in forests for many years between his mother's death and his arrival at the village that was kind to him, and from that time, had always felt safer around trees – especially the towering and shady trees that had so often given him refuge from predators, murderous demons, hostile humans and bad weather. Unlike Sesshomaru, Inuyasha had no power of flight; but he could jump so high into the air and still land so lightly that he often "flew" through treetops and open spaces in enormous bounds – it was nearly as good as flying, over a shorter distance.

He crossed the open space between the red garden and the patch of wood, and entered the cool, tree-shaded area. At once, he soared into the branches of the first sturdy tree he came upon, and surveyed as much of the wood as he could see from there.

It was part of a much larger forest, most of which extended beyond the boundary walls of these grounds. He knew that it was his grandfather and father who had built the castle proper. But from his mother he had heard how his father had explained that the land which now surrounded the castle had been claimed by his dog-demon ancestors for many thousands of years before the castle itself was constructed.

It appeared that when the time came to mark out the demon lords' personal territory with walls of stone, the line they had chosen had run through the forest, and they had built right through that part of the woods, bringing some of the ancient trees within the borders of their land. The forest might even have occupied this entire bounded space to begin with, and perhaps his father's predecessors had cleared most of the trees that eventually fell within the walls. But for some reason, they had left this patch untouched.

He sprang lightly from branch to branch, from tree to tree, until he was at the boundary walls. When he stopped on a branch almost directly above the wall, he could see a small group of guards on patrol along the perimeter looking up at him unhappily, undoubtedly having been given clear orders that the half-demon prince was forbidden to leave the castle grounds, and wondering how they could stop him if he tried. For one thing, he had his great demon-father's blood and was probably stronger than all of them combined; for another, their officers had also given them strict instructions that under no circumstances were they to injure the prince. Naturally, they were less than delighted to see him so close to the wall.

Inuyasha gazed out at the wild forest beyond. It would be so tempting to take another few leaps – just across a few more trees, and he would be out and away – and Sesshomaru would be as mad as hell.

But buoyed by his banter with Jaken that morning, he felt more cheerful about life in general, so he grinned down at the armoured demons by the wall, and yelled to them: "For fuck's sake, wipe those stupid looks off your faces! I'm not going past the wall! If I wanted to, you wouldn't be strong enough to stop me, so it's not like there's any use in looking so damn miserable about it!"

"Your Highness! Lord Sesshomaru says you are too young to be let out alone, and he will have our heads if you go over that wall!" one of them called up to him.

"'Too young' my ass. And why does the rest of that crap sound so familiar? He seems to threaten folk for every tiny reason, doesn't he? "

Inuyasha turned in another direction, and with the great leaps that were so easy for his strong young body to execute, he soared under the tree canopy parallel to the boundary wall until he was out of the guards' sight – and then he stopped and caught his breath.

For right there before him was a splendid, ancient tree, growing in a space somewhat roomier than that which the other trees enjoyed. Although it had a thinner trunk and less foliage than the tree in the village said to be sacred to the gods, it had a grave old air that reminded him of that well-loved giant he had left behind, and told him he had found his very own piece of enchanted forest right here within the castle grounds.

Inuyasha jumped lightly to the ground, approached the great tree, and gazed up at it in wonder. It was so gnarled, yet so strong; almost creaking with age, yet emanating an aura powerful beyond measure. Reverently, he stroked the bark, which was rough without being scratchy, and rock-hard while seeming to breathe and sense the air around it.

He closed his eyes and touched his forehead to the trunk, and at once he felt at peace, as if his cares were but tiny bugs that had lost their bite and could not truly touch him.

"May I?" he asked the tree softly, seeking permission to sit in its branches.

He thought he sensed it whispering back in the silent way trees have of speaking to the ones who know how to listen to them, even on days when there is no wind whistling through their leaves: _You are welcome to rest in my arms, little prince._

So Inuyasha leaped into its great, woody limbs, found a comfortable crook between the trunk and one enormous branch, and very quickly drifted off into an afternoon nap filled with peaceful dreams of his mother smiling and laughing, and even of a white-haired, golden-eyed someone who must have been his father, looking at him with kindness and pride.

...

From a window in the castle, Sesshomaru had seen Inuyasha wander through the gardens, then towards the patch of wood within the boundary wall like a bee towards a flower. It was quite possible that his brother was planning to escape, but the guards had raised no alarm, and Sesshomaru could still see the light-purple fabric of the outfit Natsumi had chosen for the prince to wear today, flashing through the leaves.

Judging by his movements, he did not seem to be planning to flee. Nonetheless, fear grew in Sesshomaru's heart to see him so close to the wall, for the last thing he wanted was to have to bring the boy back by force. An attempted escape could not go unpunished, and it would quite destroy all the efforts he had made these few days to keep him calm and compliant by treating him well.

So the demon lord strode out to the patch of forest, and followed his brother's scent until he found the tree he was resting in.

Of course he would find _this_ tree of all trees, wouldn't he?

The pace of Inuyasha's heartbeat and the rhythm of his breathing, which the demon lord's sharp ears could hear from where he stood, told Sesshomaru that he had fallen asleep. He shook his head, wondering why Inuyasha would choose to nap among scratchy branches when he had a perfectly comfortable bed to sleep in. But he remained silent, standing there on the ground and looking up at the boy for some time until he stirred, sensed his presence, opened his eyes, and stared down at him.

"I'm not required to report to you until dinner time," Inuyasha said with a groan.

Sesshomaru took a deep breath to prevent himself from rebuking the boy for his lack of respect, remembering that he had wished to see him as he truly was, not as he compelled himself to be in the bedroom. Instead, he said: "I see you've found Father's favourite tree."

"This was Father's favourite tree?" Inuyasha asked, a hint of curiosity in his voice.

"Yes, it was. He spent a lot of time out here with it, and he even told me its name: Bokusen'o. He also claimed that the tree had offered him some of its branches to make the scabbards for his swords."

"Really?"

"I wouldn't lie to you," Sesshomaru told him. It was probably true – the demon lord was many things, but he was no liar. "I'll show you those swords and scabbards when I have the time to tell you about them in detail."

"This tree talked to Father?" the prince asked.

"That's what Father told me."

"Yeah?"

"Has it spoken to you?" Sesshomaru inquired. It was difficult to carry on a conversation like this, craning his neck to look at the half-demon perched high above him, but he put up with it because he did not want to jump into the branches uninvited, or float above the ground and invade what little personal space his brother had left to him these days.

"Well, it didn't say no when I asked if I could sit in its branches – but I sure don't hear it giving _you_ permission to do the same," the prince replied.

Despite himself, Sesshomaru almost chuckled. But he kept a straight face and said to Inuyasha: "Very well, enjoy your afternoon in the tree. Don't be late for dinner."

With that, he turned and walked back to the castle, knowing that while he had not lied to his brother, neither had he told him everything. His head filled now with memories of how once, a long time ago, Bokusen'o had talked to him too, until he had begun to live so hedonistically after his father's death that the ancient tree had sniffed, with displeasure, the fumes of wine, blood, lust and sadism that continually rolled off his body, day after day, and heard his bitter speeches about his father's foolishness, and gradually communicated less and less until at last it ceased to breathe another word to him.

Even when Sesshomaru had come to his senses at last, curtailed his own excesses and done his best to rule his lands well, the tree had never spoken to him again.

...

In that long-ago age, most demons did not believe in farming, considering themselves creatures born to hunt prey and thrive on what the earth could yield them from its wild spaces. But for an establishment as large as the demon lord's castle, it was unfeasible to rely on a supply of food that came from its hunters alone.

So the food for the castle came primarily from standing orders for beef, pork, eggs and vegetables placed with human farmers who owned land within the kingdom's territories and were paid fairly for their produce; from the few hunters employed by the castle to bring back deer, wild fowl, seafood and rabbits; and from the groundsmen who dabbled in growing their own vegetables and raising some poultry.

Occasionally, states under the demon lord's protection would provide tribute in kind when they were short of cash; Sesshomaru had told his administrative staff to be flexible about such matters.

That was what Jaken had mentioned to Inuyasha this morning before their etiquette lesson. And as Inuyasha looked at the spread on the table for dinner, he could only conclude that the human farmers must have had a poultry population explosion of sorts – either that, or the hunters had found no deer and only retrieved fowl – or perhaps tribute had just come in from some state overrun by feathered creatures. For the table was bursting with roasted goose, duck and chicken, braised duck with vegetables, chicken soup with herbs, and egg dishes galore.

Demons often eat their food raw, but it seems that when it comes to poultry, they like it as well cooked as anyone else. Inuyasha loved roast goose and duck, and enjoyed all kinds of egg dishes. He eagerly tucked into the food, and found that he very much liked the herbal chicken soup too when he sipped it, for it tasted almost exactly like what his mother had cooked for him when she was still alive.

"I thought it would be good for you to have a little more variety in your diet for dinner," Sesshomaru told him. "You've had raw beef for three nights now, and I thought it best to give you another type of meat."

"It's great, thanks," Inuyasha murmured, savouring a slice of roast goose, rich with its fat-fragrant smoothness.

Sesshomaru was eating too, happy with his brother's appetite and even enjoying the taste of the food himself.

"I don't often need to eat, except when I have expended a great deal of energy in battle, flight or transformation," the demon lord casually remarked. "But sometimes the taste of food appeals to me. How long can you go without food?"

He wanted to learn more about him, but did not know if Inuyasha would give monosyllabic replies, or go into a sulk at being spoken to. However, spending the afternoon up in the ancient tree seemed to have calmed the half-demon, who answered: "I'm always hungry. But even when I don't eat for days I can still function quite normally. An empty stomach is just unpleasant, that's all."

"You can have whatever you like to eat here, as long as our kitchen staff are able to get it," Sesshomaru assured him.

"I'm not a pig," he stated, through his mouthful of goose.

"I didn't say you were. I may not eat much, but Father had a good appetite, and he loved the taste of skilfully cooked food, although raw meat suited his digestive system better. He liked raw beef, and roast goose, and very lightly cooked eggs. You seem to take after him in so many respects. Your eyes are very like his. But you're nowhere near as tall – although you still have some growing to do."

"Was he taller than you are now?" Inuyasha asked, a hint of interest in his voice, although he made no eye-contact with his brother, focusing only on the food on his plate.

"I believe he was. He was an exceptionally tall demon when in his two-legged form, and was more muscular than I am. I seem to have inherited my mother's slimness of build. Although you don't have my height – yet – or his, your physique is closer to his. But your face – you still have that childlike roundness in your cheeks – and you perhaps have something of your mother's features too."

Here, Sesshomaru caressed Inuyasha's face with his left hand, causing Inuyasha to swallow his last mouthful of food and put his cutlery down.

"What time do you want me in your room tonight?" he asked Sesshomaru coldly.

"I was thinking earlier today, in our patch of forest, that you seemed rather tired. You still look a bit drawn. You need not go to my room. Rest in yours, and have an early night. I won't bother you – but if you want to talk, or wish for my company for some reason, you are more than welcome to come over."

Inuyasha looked as if he thought Sesshomaru had lost his mind.

"So… I can go to my room now if I want? For the rest of the night?" he asked warily.

"Yes, you may," the demon lord said, amused by his brother's disbelieving air, but also a little injured that Inuyasha did not want to stay longer in his presence.

The half-demon put his napkin aside, pushed his chair back, gave Sesshomaru a quick but formal little bow, and left the dining room, leaving his brother looking after him over a table brimming with dead birds which the servants would no doubt thoroughly enjoy for their supper.

...

"I don't really need another soak, but I do want to wash my hair, so please prepare my bath quick and let me jam the door shut with a piece of furniture after you go, before he changes his mind," Inuyasha told Natsumi once he was back in his rooms, and found the racoon demon girl getting his night things ready.

"Changes his mind…?" she asked, not understanding what he meant.

"He says he doesn't need me tonight – if I'm at all lucky, it means he's getting tired of me. But whatever it means, right now it simply tells me that I can sleep unmolested all night. So what have you got for me to wash my hair with?"

Natsumi smiled at his haste, and showed him the jars and glass containers in the bathroom that held cleansing and fragrant herbal concoctions that were good for hair, and white vinegar which could also be used for cleaning or rinsing.

She left him alone in the bathroom and busied herself putting his laundered garments neatly away in the right wardrobes and chests, and looking through some outfits on hangers to see what would be best for him to wear tomorrow, until she heard him call out a little sheepishly: "Uh… Natsumi… sorry, but could you come in for a moment please? I need a bit of help."

"How can I help you, Your Highness?" she asked, hurrying in to find him crouched deep in the bath, trying not to expose himself to her, but holding the glass bottle above the water.

She had to hide a giggle as he muttered: "How am I supposed to use this herbal thing? Just pour it over, or what?"

"If you will allow me, Your Highness…" she said, kneeling by the bath and reaching over to take the bottle from him. She poured a little of it into the palm of her hand, went around behind him, spread the liquid over the top of his head, rubbed her hands together to spread the remainder over her palms and fingers, then massaged the concoction into his scalp to absorb what dirt and grease there was. Very gently, she rubbed it around his triangular ear flaps too, taking care not to get any of it into the ear canals. She poured out a little more, and smoothed it over the length of his silver hair.

Inuyasha melted under her fingertips. It felt so good, and she was as gentle as his mother had been, careful not to snag his hair with her little claws or pull his ear flaps. After that, he trusted her to scoop up some of the bath water in a small container and pour it over his hair, making sure to avoid his ears and warning him in a soothing voice to close his eyes in case some of the water ran down his face. To clean the herbal liquid off the backs of his ear flaps, she wet her hands with water repeatedly and rubbed the downy fur and soft skin until they squeaked.

"Now for the vinegar rinse," she said softly, diluting some of the clear vinegar with water so it didn't smell so tart, while retaining its crisp scent. Asking him to tip his head back, she poured the solution over his tresses, making sure most of it ran onto the floor and not back into the bath, combed it through his fringe and smoothed it down his sidelocks, and he was done.

"Shall I help you with the rest of your bath, Your Highness?" she asked, a little cheekily, for she knew what his reaction would be.

"Natsumi," Inuyasha gave a mock-growl. "What I like about you is that you _don't_ do all kinds of things to my unclothed body."

"Very well, Your Highness," she said with a smile, and left him to soothe his limbs and muscles in the deliciously hot water.

When she decided that he must have sat in the water long enough to turn into a prune, she called out to him, and he reluctantly left the bath to let her dry his hair and clean the insides of his ears, and ask if the sleepwear she had set out was to his liking.

"It's _fine_ ," he said impatiently. "Now shoo. I'm going to bed."

He ushered her out before hoisting up one of the heavier chests and jamming it behind the door – not that it would stop Sesshomaru, but at least it would give him warning if his brother changed his mind about leaving him alone and tried to slip in.

Not knowing about the secret passage gave him full peace of mind as he jumped into his big, comfortable bed and burrowed down under the covers for a nice, peaceful night of rest. _And all alone too,_ he thought, _the gods be thanked_.


	11. Words

The temptation to use the secret passage just to have a look at the boy was powerful. But Sesshomaru had made up his mind to behave honourably tonight, as a first step towards earning his brother's trust.

 _Damn that sense of honour,_ thought the demon lord. Although his behaviour in private had been far from ideal for a long time, he was essentially honourable in the depths of his character – the consequence of his proper upbringing by his father, and guidance from his godfathers.

Yes, his godfathers.

Long ago, Sesshomaru had had two demon godfathers: the artist-swordsmith who had painted the blue pattern above his bed, and who had become a trusted friend of his father's; and of course the old tree, Bokusen'o. In his childhood, he had sometimes slipped out to talk to Bokusen'o when he could not sleep, or had heard the gravelly voice of his artist godfather in his head soothing him into slumber as he studied the blue swirls on the ceiling.

But after the late demon lord's death, he had pushed away his godfathers by his bitter words against his sire, and by refusing to let them see his younger brother. Eventually, one stopped visiting, and the other stopped talking to him.

As he lay alone in his bed now, he realised that he no longer had recourse to the advice of the two wise old demons, when perhaps this was when he most needed their words of wisdom, to tell him if he was trying to win his brother's trust and affection in the right way.

By letting Inuyasha sleep alone, he hoped to demonstrate that he cared about his welfare and desired more than just his body. As a consequence, he was now spending the night staring up at the familiar blue design above his bed, trying to lose himself in its intricate swirls, but finding instead that every curve brought to mind a curve on Inuyasha's face or body – the shape of his lips, his curling lashes, the beautiful muscles on his thighs and calves, his firm little bottom… Once again, he felt sorely tempted to use the secret passage, but he resisted it with all his might.

At last, Sesshomaru turned over onto his front and slept for a while with his face half-pressed into his pillow before rising very early, long before the sun goddess deigned to show her face. As he was up, he decided on a whim to do a surprise inspection of every corner of his castle, including some of the gardens.

Although the castle followed a largely busy-by-day and quiet-by-night schedule for the sake of having a consistent routine that would be in step with the majority of the kingdom, many demons were in fact more active in the hours of darkness, and most did not require regular sleep. Therefore, at any time of the day or night, at least half the castle was sure to be up and about, doing work or getting in some training, exercise or relaxation, although there was an understanding that they would do so with less noise until the sun rose, in case others required rest.

By the time Sesshomaru was done with his inspection – during which he surprised three dog-demon sentries playing card games while on duty in the administration wing; two fox-demon servants engaged in a fumbling pre-sex act in the general laundry room; a dog-demon gardener rather mystifyingly entangled in a thorny bush; and a wolf-demon cook in agony in the general servants' kitchen after having accidentally put his hand into a pot of soup over the fire – the demon lord decided that things were getting slack around his private domain, and summoned all the officers and housekeeping heads for a morning lecture that was delivered in a speaking voice so calm and yet so laden with royal disapproval that some of them were left fearing for their jobs and their hides, and the lives of their subordinates.

In the end, no one was sacked, whipped or executed. The card-playing guards were fined a month's wages and punished with a sentence of a week's imprisonment in the cells beside the barracks; the fumbling fox demons were let off with a warning, and one of them reassigned to a job with different hours, when Sesshomaru learnt that they were mates who had not had the opportunity to be in bed with each other for two weeks as their off-duty hours never coincided; and the gardening and kitchen heads were told to review their respective departments' hiring and work processes and carry out all necessary retraining and changes.

...

Unlike Sesshomaru, Inuyasha had an excellent night's sleep. He awoke early, alert and chirpy, and cheerfully shifted the furniture away from the door when Natsumi tried to enter and found her way blocked.

When he made his way down to breakfast, he noticed that Sesshomaru looked less than well-rested, but he did not know why, and as he had little reason at present to feel any pity for his brother, he did not spare him much sympathy. Instead, as he ate heartily while the demon lord barely touched his tea, he even had a request to make: could he and Jaken have this morning's lesson out of doors, in the patch of forest under Bokusen'o?

Sesshomaru replied that he did not see why they shouldn't. Happily, Inuyasha excused himself from the table and sprinted to the library to drag his tutor across the fields to the forest patch, leaving the small kappa demon out of breath and complaining loudly to his charge that he was going too fast for him to keep up.

When at last they reached the old tree, Jaken was almost too breathless to conduct the lesson, but a sip of water and a short rest revived him.

"Well, this certainly is a nice and shady spot, Your Highness," Jaken said, looking about him. "I have passed through this patch of forest before, but I've never stopped to rest in it."

"So what are we going to learn today?" Inuyasha asked, leaning against Bokusen'o's trunk. A single leaf fell into his lap as he leaned back, and he noted that it was green, glossy and healthy, so he received it gratefully as a gift from the tree, and tucked it inside his clothing.

"As we are out here amongst all these splendidly ancient trees, perhaps you would like to learn a little about the mythology of our lands, or some history?" Jaken suggested.

"Sure. What about a story from myth, then? No one's told me a proper story in a long time!" the half-demon said enthusiastically, sounding very much like a child.

Jaken decided that he could indulge the prince once in a while. "Very well," he said, and began his narration. "Do you know the legend of the crystal jewel? Not much of it? Ah, then you must hear the whole tale. This is how it goes: It is said that a magical crystal jewel, which once belonged to the realms of the gods, had the power of both good and evil. The jewel was never meant to leave the place where the gods dwelt, for the gods knew that if it entered the world we live in, it might fall into evil hands and be used to do terrible things.

"According to the story, a time came when the imps from hell learnt about the jewel, and stole into the heavens to see it. They laid their hands on it when they thought the gods were not looking, and turned the jewel entirely to darkness. But the gods caught them in the act and rushed to recover the jewel from the imps. In their haste and panic, the imps dropped the jewel from the heavens, and it fell out of the sky like a stone.

"The jewel fell all the way down to this world and shattered into millions of pieces, and those shards of hellish darkness entered the hearts and bodies of demons and beasts and humans, and for long, long years that seemed to have no end, terrible things were done all over the earth. The few good souls that remained in the world prayed to the gods, who granted them a vision showing them what had happened to the jewel, and how to make things right again. To save everyone from darkness, the good souls learnt that they must gather the shards and make the jewel whole again, then purify it so that it might no longer do harm.

"A small band of brave demons, humans and beasts came together to search for the jewel shards, and after enduring much suffering and pain, they finally gathered every last dark shard and made the jewel whole once more. Then a powerful priestess who had travelled with the band drove out the darkness that the imps had put into the jewel. But she saw that while the millions of shards of darkness had penetrated all the world, the purified jewel was now only one piece, and could not do as much good as the dark shards had done harm, even if she made the most selfless wishes on it. And she could no longer return it to the heavens, for the gods cannot take back anything that has been sullied by this world."

"So what did she do?" Inuyasha asked anxiously, when Jaken paused in his telling of the tale.

"With the blessing of the gods, who feared that evil forces might once more control the entire crystal and make it dark, the priestess took a sacred arrow and shattered the jewel again into millions of tiny pieces, small enough to enter hearts and souls and eyes without our knowing it. But this time, the pieces were pure and full of light, and they scattered their purity throughout every realm. It is said that these purified shards of the crystal jewel still remain in this world, piercing hard hearts to teach them compassion and love, entering cruel eyes to make them see the world in a good way, and slipping into evil souls to make them repent."

"I guess it didn't splinter into enough pieces, as there's still so much evil in the world," Inuyasha murmured.

"Perhaps not – but you never know when a shard might be waiting to pierce your enemy's heart, and bad will become good."

"There are some creatures who will never be good, even if you stick a thousand shards into them as if they were giant pincushions!" Inuyasha scoffed.

"Then leave them to the imps of hell!" Jaken concluded tidily. "How about some history now? Tales of things that we know actually did happen?"

"Uhm… okay, but can you tell me that part of history which involves my father? Tell me again what happened when all the demon warlords turned against him – didn't he have any friends at all?"

"Your Highness, of course your father had friends. But some were not powerful enough to help him, and others he ordered to keep away from the battle, because he wanted them to live and help your brother develop into a good ruler. You see all the tribes and kingdoms that now pledge friendship or allegiance to Lord Sesshomaru? All their hostile old leaders who had gathered together against your father were slain by him or by Lord Sesshomaru, and their present rulers are the ones who took over after that, and decided that they wanted peace with the new demon lord.

"Let me tell you about some of the main leaders of the armies that gathered against your father, and about their successors. The dragons and other reptiles were led by Ryuukotsusei, the wolves by the Old Fang, the demon birds by the one they called their Great Mother, the cats by Master Moju, the bat demons by Taikoumori, the bear demons by Kumakuro, and the spider demons by Onigumo. The monkeys, racoons and foxes did not turn against your father, but the little tricksters were far too scattered and powerless to help him. The chiefs of my tribe, the kappas, determined that we were too small in number and far too physically small to do much – the chiefs offered their assistance, but your father declined, for our home bases are underwater, and your mother could not possibly have survived there for even a minute. The same was certainly true for the flea demons, even though your father had a faithful flea follower named Myoga – they were too small and insignificant to offer any practical help. Even Lord Sesshomaru's mother sent word that she was willing to help, despite her personal disagreements with her former mate – but your sire also refused to involve her, because her tiny kingdom holds a population of pure dog demons, and your father decided that if his kingdom fell, hers must continue intact and safe for the sake of their kind.

"As for the two largest and strongest guilds, they were run by corrupt leaders who lent their support to your father's enemies. The swordsmiths' guild was headed by a rascal named Kaijinbo, who had once been a disciple of the great Totosai, your father's closest friend, but who leapfrogged him in political power thanks to his ruthless ambition. Totosai was commanded by your sire to keep out of the battle, so that he could guide Lord Sesshomaru after your father's death. As for the jewellers' guild, Old Adamant was in charge in those days, and he was no ally of your family's, although one of his people, Hosenki, was your father's great friend, but was also ordered by your sire to keep away from the battle, because he was so old and frail by then."

"But all those hostile leaders were slain by my father and brother?" Inuyasha asked.

"Yes. And their successors, as you may have noticed, are much friendlier. Ryuukotsusei's daughter now rules the reptile tribes, and she has no interest in war; the wolves are led by Prince Koga, who has always been a good ally of your brother's – he was opposed to the war, but was much too young to influence what was then his grand-uncle's tribe; the demon birds are now controlled by Princess Abi, now _Queen_ Abi, of course, who while warlike has never moved against Lord Sesshomaru; the cats follow Mistress Touran – she had spats with your brother before, but they later made peace; the bats turned to Taikoumori's sensible son; the bear demons obey Kumakuro's son now, and he is respectful enough towards your brother, although he threatens other lands; the swordsmiths' guild has been taken over by Totosai after all, although I understand that your brother has quarrelled with him; and the jewellers' guild by the old Hosenki's son, also called Hosenki. All the tribes and guilds see that their people are well-treated by your brother in his kingdom, and that he employs demons of almost all species and pays them fair wages as long as they are loyal to him and do good work for him. They keep the peace with him not only because of his immense power, but also for the sake of their kind who live in his lands."

"You haven't mentioned the spiders," Inuyasha prompted.

"Ah – the spiders. Now, that's a difficult tribe. When Onigumo was slain, it is said that by some dark magic that he had used in his lifetime, an evil human soul and a host of evil demon souls proceeded from him, and joined together to form their present half-demon leader, Naraku. Naraku is… dangerous. He behaves diplomatically, but his eyes are sly and Lord Sesshomaru does not trust him at all. No one trusts him. I can safely say that among all the tribes and lands that went against your father and later made peace with your brother, this is the only one that Lord Sesshomaru and his ministers see no significant promise in as far as alliances are concerned. The castle employs no spider demons. I understand that in your father's day, the castle employed only dog, fox and racoon demons; we now have all kinds of demons working here – but still no spiders – and I do not think that will change any time soon."

"How did you come to be employed by Sesshomaru?" Inuyasha asked.

"Lord Sesshomaru needed someone to oversee the replacement, collection and cataloguing of the castle's books and records – the documents and publications suffered enormous damage during the battle against your father's enemies – I believe one of the dragon armies set the library on fire. Lord Sesshomaru initially left the task to some of his existing staff, and they handled it as best they could for a long time, but they were ill-suited for it as they were not scholars. When I heard about a hundred years ago that he had need of someone who had learning and expertise with documents, I applied for the job, and thus far, I have not lost it! I have my own staff now, of course, and they are quite trained and competent, which is why I have time to be your tutor in the mornings. Now, we've had our stories, and our tales – it's time to move on to some proper military history – how about a discussion on whether the Northern Bear Revolt in the third year of King Kantaro's reign failed primarily because of poor strategy or the hostile weather?"

Inuyasha groaned and sought mental strength by rubbing his head against the bark of Bokuseno's trunk.

 _Don't be lazy, little one,_ he thought he heard the tree say, at the same time as the leaf within his garments seemed to grow comfortingly warm. _You have much to learn._

So he applied himself, and did his best to receive what Jaken had to teach him that morning, while the tree that he did not realise had now appointed itself as _his_ new godfather imparted strength and calmness and peace to him.

...

Sesshomaru was watching from a window when Inuyasha's morning lessons ended, and the half-demon, dressed by Natsumi in green and gold today, walked back towards the castle with his tutor trotting and panting in his wake.

He had missed having Inuyasha in his bed last night, and wished to spend a little time talking to him now, so he made his way downstairs, towards the particular entrance of the castle that Inuyasha looked to be heading for.

As he reached the landing of the staircase closest to that doorway, he caught the scent of his half-brother below, approaching the arched side-entrance beside the autumn-themed garden. A dog-demon servant from the housekeeping department was standing by the doorway, sweeping the floor, watching Inuyasha enter – Sesshomaru knew him as one of the children of the old castle servants who had grown up on these grounds and in time had come to be employed here too. Sesshomaru stepped down silently towards the ground floor, unnoticed by anyone below, for his scent was all over the castle, and his footfalls were soundless.

As his brother came through the door, the servant looked from where he was standing to be smirking, although from that angle, Sesshomaru could not fairly say that he wasn't simply smiling.

What was unmistakable to his sharp ears, however, was that as Inuyasha passed him, the servant said in a voice loud enough to reach Inuyasha, but not intended to be heard by other servants nearby: "Came back to be your brother's whore, did you?"

Sesshomaru saw Inuyasha stop, turn towards the servant, and glare at him in silence for several moments, before speaking: "So it's you – Mamoru – the dirty-faced runt who used to have to gather all your brothers together before you dared to so much as trip me up round corners. You're just a total piece of shit who's not worth my time."

Inuyasha walked away, but Mamoru sneered again: "Whore."

Before the half-demon could react, Sesshomaru, by now in a towering rage, stormed down the remaining stairs, to the horror of the servant, who had not realised he was there. Mamoru cowered before him and tried to fall to his knees, but Sesshomaru dealt him a brutal kick which had him flying backwards out of the arched doorway, to land heavily on the paved walkway that led from the autumn garden into the castle.

"Sesshomaru!" Inuyasha shouted, running towards him as he bore down on the servant again. He could smell Mamoru's blood. By this time, servants from the nearby wings of the castle were hurrying towards them, wondering what the commotion was about, and were alarmed to discover that Lord Sesshomaru himself was meting out punishment.

The half-demon, not wishing even this most unsavoury of servants to lose his life because of him, leaped in front of his brother and tried to keep him away from Mamoru, saying: "It's not worth your time, Sesshomaru! Don't bother! He's just full of crap! That's the way he's always been!"

But Sesshomaru would not be pacified, especially after he had just reminded all his heads of staff to enforce greater discipline, and had been so lenient with all the offenders he had come across in the night and early morning. Firmly holding off Inuyasha with one arm, the demon lord reached Mamoru again and kicked him once more in the ribs, splitting the skin over his side and breaking his bones. Blood seeped through the servant's tunic.

"How dare you open your mouth to insult your prince and your lord?" Sesshomaru roared.

"Stop it!" Inuyasha yelled, wrenching free of Sesshomaru's grasp – which had kept him behind his brother – and placing himself once more between the demon lord and Mamoru. "Stop it – you'll kill him if you do that again – it's not worth a life!"

No one but Inuyasha would have dared to intervene. Although the servants were not slaves, they were still serving their king, and the king had the right to take his subjects' lives at any time if he considered their behaviour treasonous or sufficiently heinous. The look in Sesshomaru's eyes left no one in doubt that he considered Mamoru's conduct heinous.

"Stand aside," Sesshomaru ordered Inuyasha.

"No."

"I won't kick him again. Stand aside."

Hesitantly, Inuyasha allowed Sesshomaru through, but remained level with his brother and kept a sharp eye on his movements.

Speaking to the bloodied, battered servant grovelling on the ground before him, Sesshomaru growled in a low voice: "How dare you speak so offensively of what you know nothing about? Whore, you say? We shall see who the whore really is now."


	12. Punishment

Inuyasha felt ill. This was wrong, and completely unnecessary.

"Stop it, Sesshomaru – put a stop to it now!" he demanded. "You shouldn't have stepped in – all you had to do was let me smack him about the head for a bit, and that would have settled it. This isn't right – tell them to stop!"

Earlier, Sesshomaru had taken him by the arm and forced him up the stairs to this open-sided gallery they stood in now, after the demon lord had given his orders to the guards to have Mamoru punished for insulting his king and prince.

The method of punishment sickened Inuyasha. Down below in the open area that the gallery overlooked, Mamoru was stripped bare, bent over, and strapped down to a wooden frame. His legs were spread and lashed by the ankles to the extreme left and right lower ends of the frame. His body was bent face-down over the curved top of the frame, and his hands were bound to the ends of the frame close to the ground on the other side. A coarse wooden phallus, splinters and all, was mounted on a pole jammed into the earth before him and set at just the right height to be shoved into his mouth as a gag. Behind him, a line of guards summoned from the barracks queued up to take their turns to rape him.

One of Sesshomaru's treasurers stood beside the frame, tossing five bronze coins into a bucket for every guard who finished with the servant – the going rate for basic services from whores whose speciality was catering to customers who liked things rough.

"Stop it _now_!" Inuyasha snarled at Sesshomaru, almost frantic with disgust as the third guard pushed hard into Mamoru and used him thoroughly, apparently having a great deal of fun as the others before him had. They had no mercy on him and did not hold back at all – Mamoru was already bleeding and sore at both ends, making muffled cries of pain with each movement despite his natural demon resilience, for the guards were demons too, with corresponding strength and brutality. The ends of his broken ribs rasped against one another, and the blood kept oozing out from his left side, while the splinters tore his mouth.

Sesshomaru maintained a firm grip on Inuyasha's right arm to prevent him from either jumping downstairs to intervene or running away from the gallery. With what looked to the half-demon like a sadistic smirk on his face, he observed: "He should be grateful that I am sparing his life and all his appendages. This is nothing compared with having his tongue or his head cut off, is it? That vile mouth of his deserves a few splinters in it for having uttered the disgusting word he used on you, and what is happening at his other end should teach him to think twice before he speaks such filth about others of whom he knows nothing. He's even getting paid for it – those coins are his to keep for servicing my security personnel."

"There's no need to go this far!" Inuyasha yelled, trying again to twist his arm free of Sesshomaru's hand.

"Stop that," the demon lord said sternly, in low tones. "I should warn you that if you jump down there and try to free him, it will be a direct and very public challenge to my authority. To ensure that others do not read any weakness on _my_ part into such openly rebellious behaviour from _you_ , I shall be obliged to execute that piece of filth on the spot. So if you want him to stay alive, I would suggest that you refrain from trying to 'help'."

"Why do you have to do this? Why do you _keep_ doing this shit and making threats?" Inuyasha snarled. "What is happening down there is _sick_!"

"He is _my_ subject, and I have the right to order him punished for insulting my brother, and also for insulting me by suggesting that I, his king, would require the services of a whore," Sesshomaru stated logically.

"Well, he wasn't wrong, was he?" Inuyasha growled.

"What did you say?" Sesshomaru asked angrily, turning to glare at him.

"I said he wasn't wrong!" Inuyasha repeated, raising his voice. "What the hell am I if not your whore? That's exactly what you've been treating me as, you fucking sadistic bastard!"

More coins rattled into the bucket below as Inuyasha fought so hard to pull away from Sesshomaru that the demon lord believed the boy would break his own arm if he did not release him. So he let go, and glared coldly into his blazing gold eyes for a moment before Inuyasha turned and ran down the gallery, back in the direction of his own room.

 _Fine,_ thought Sesshomaru. _If he doesn't want to watch the insulting cur receive what he had coming to him, that's his problem._

But Inuyasha's last words had lodged in his heart, and once again, the uncomfortable sense of a glassy shard piercing him made itself felt. Suddenly, he didn't want to watch any more. He could not just call off the guards, however. It would look like a lack of resolve.

At this point, Mamoru's father approached the gallery to beg the sentries standing guard there for access to the demon lord, to speak with him for just a few moments.

"What is it?" Sesshomaru snapped at the sentries, when he heard the hushed but irritatingly insistent voices coming from one end of the gallery.

"My lord, Morio from the housekeeping department requests permission to speak with you," one of the sentries explained.

"Let him through."

The dog demon, who had worked for Sesshomaru's family for seven hundred years, trotted forward, weeping, with his head lowered, and when he was a few feet from his lord, he dropped to his knees and bowed, knocking his forehead against the stone floor.

"My lord! I beg you, please!" the old servant wailed loudly. "Please have mercy on my son! He has always been difficult to control, and truly he has deserved all the punishment he has received, but I plead with you to let him off – I fear he will never recover from this if he must endure it much longer – please, my lord! He is my youngest pup!"

Sesshomaru gazed down at the old demon, who had always served his family faithfully and well, and saw that this was his opportunity to end a spectacle it no longer pleased him to watch. He maintained his silence for several seconds more, however, as if he were weighing the matter, while the old servant continued to press his forehead to the stone.

At last, the demon lord signalled to the officer below to put a stop to the punishment.

"As Morio has served my family so faithfully for so long, I shall for his sake cut short his son's punishment," Sesshomaru announced. "However, I do not want to see that creature within my grounds again. Lock him up in the town prison for two weeks. After his release, he is never to return to this castle – give his job to someone else."

Morio bowed again and again and expressed his profuse thanks both to his king and to the now-absent prince for his compassion. He hurried downstairs to get his son far away from the demon lord's displeasure and find a healer who would treat him in the prison that stood in the town two miles from the castle grounds.

Sesshomaru turned away from the gallery and headed directly for Inuyasha's bedroom. He entered without knocking. Inuyasha sprang up from his bed and stood defensively by his desk. Sesshomaru could see that he had been in tears.

"Done with him, so you're coming for me now, are you?" the half-demon shouted. "Is that the sick way you treat anyone who doesn't behave as you expect? Is that what you're going to do to _me_ if I anger you?"

"Don't be stupid, Inuyasha," Sesshomaru replied coldly. "You are no servant. Princes are not treated that way."

"I don't give a fucking _shit_ about who's a servant and who's a prince!" Inuyasha yelled. "People are people, whether they're royalty or slaves, demons or humans, and you have no fucking right to treat them like they were less than worms!"

Inuyasha picked up an inkstone and hurled it at Sesshomaru's head to punctuate his last word. The furious demon lord dodged the missile, which crashed against the wall behind him and clattered to the floor. He took a step towards his brother, eyes blazing and flecked with red. "Inuyasha! Cease this ridiculous behaviour at once!" he thundered. "You have no right to tell me how to handle my subjects and servants, and you are certainly out of line throwing objects at me! You should be grateful that I took action to defend your honour!"

"Grateful?" Inuyasha exploded in greater fury. " _Grateful?_ For 'defending my honour'? You twisted pervert – you're warped enough to threaten my human friends to bring me back to this loathsome pile of stones I never wanted to see again, and disgusting enough to use me like some fucking _toy_ , a whore whose services you pay for with nice clothes and good food, and you speak of 'defending my honour' when _you're_ the one who's been violating me? You have _no fucking sense_ of honour!"

"Inuyasha…" Sesshomaru growled.

"What? You'll fly out now and kill all the villagers simply because I'm being rude to you? Oh, that's really the sign of a great and magnanimous king, isn't it? Or what? You'll strap me to a frame and whip me? Cut off my head? What kind of a fucking evil king are you to hold people hostage and treat them like shit? You make me sick!"

"If you are incapable of governing your emotions enough to speak sensibly and logically to me, then I shall leave you alone until you are," Sesshomaru said icily, although in truth he was both shocked and enraged by Inuyasha's stunning, repetitively expletive-laden outburst.

He concealed his surprise as well as he always did, turning on his heel and striding out of the prince's room, then felt a surge of greater anger when the half-demon slammed the door shut after him. He was about to turn around and march back in to give him a further piece of his mind for that last gesture of rudeness, when he heard Inuyasha shoving heavy pieces of furniture about the room and realised that he was blocking the door with them. Sesshomaru knew he could still tear the door off or break it down easily, but it would hardly be worth the trouble.

So he stormed into his own bedroom and paced up and down for an hour, raging inside his own head at Inuyasha for his insolence, his ingratitude in response to Sesshomaru's efforts to treat him kindly and defend his honour, and his outrageous accusations against his lord and brother. The lad deserved to be held down over his lap and spanked till his royal backside was too sore to sit down on for days!

The thought of Inuyasha's backside aroused Sesshomaru and made him instantly, inconveniently, hard. He had voluntarily spent last night without his delicious half-demon and had missed him badly – but the way things were going now, it looked as if he would not be enjoying his company for the second night in a row. At least not without using force on him, and that would not do, for after hearing those bitter accusations from Inuyasha, Sesshomaru hardly wished to bear them out.

...

"Your Highness, please let me in!" Natsumi pleaded, knocking at the door, which she found jammed tightly shut and impossible to shift even half an inch.

"Go away!" Inuyasha yelled.

"Your Highness, please!" she begged. "It's almost time for dinner!"

But Inuyasha did not reply again, and refused to come to the door although she knocked and called out for a good half-hour. The guards shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders as if to say that it was useless, the prince had been like that all day, and without Lord Sesshomaru's permission, they could not break the door down.

So Natsumi went away, and was obliged to report back to Lord Sesshomaru in his office that his brother would not admit her to his room.

"Then leave him be," was Sesshomaru's answer, before he dismissed Natsumi with instructions to let Inuyasha alone and try again the next morning. In the meantime, said the demon lord, she and Jaken and the other servants were forbidden to try and slip him any food from the kitchens, and she was to tell the bath-furnace operators that there would be no need to heat his bath water. "If he wants his dinner, he will have to go to the dining room as he knows he must. And if he wants a hot bath, he will have to come out like a civilised prince and say so to me. But if he chooses to behave like an unreasonable child, I shall treat him like one until he decides to act more sensibly."

After unhappily relaying the lord's orders to the furnace operators, Natsumi walked out into the field before the royal wing, and looked up at Inuyasha's bedroom windows. The prince had closed his shutters tightly, and had probably moved the wardrobe and tall cabinet behind them too. He must have, if he had decided to make it as hard as possible for anyone to enter – after all, Sesshomaru and a good number of the demon guards could fly, so Inuyasha would have known that access through the window would be as easy for his brother and anyone he sent as through the door.

"Has His Highness opened his windows at all since he shut them?" she asked the sentries posted along the outside of the wing.

"No, Natsumi," one of them replied. "We'll tell you if he does."

She sighed and returned to her own room, for there was nothing else for her to do if the prince refused to be served.

Later, she heard from her lover who worked in the kitchen that Inuyasha had not appeared for dinner at all, and that Lord Sesshomaru had sat at the table alone, hardly touching any food, but drinking several glasses of wine in what was plainly a foul mood.

"Shall I try and slip you some food for him?" Kazuki whispered to his beloved when they found a quiet corner to talk in. "I feel grateful to him for not mistreating you or using you as so many other princes would – and Mamoru's sister has also asked if she can do anything for him – she knows His Highness stood up to Lord Sesshomaru for her brother's sake, even though he and her other brothers bullied the prince when they were children."

"It's useless," Natsumi whispered back. "He won't open the door for me, and his windows are shut tight. I couldn't even throw food in to him if I tried. But I think he has some biscuits that Jaken-sensei ordered for a snack during their lessons yesterday – I found a few wrapped in a handkerchief in one of his desk drawers when I was tidying the place this morning. So I don't think he'll go completely hungry."

"That's good to know. Look, I've got to go back to the kitchen now – I'm on cleaning-up duty tonight. I'll see you later."

They gave each other a quick kiss and parted. Natsumi was not as concerned about the matter of food as she was that the prince's bathwater would be freezing cold and just about unusable if he should require some warmth.

...

In a vile temper, Sesshomaru returned to his chamber after drinking his wine alone at the dinner table, and considered his options before concluding that he had no options that would not make things even worse.

He had no wish to expose the existence of the secret passage by storming through it into Inuyasha's room, but neither did he want to send his brother into another of his astonishingly wild rages by breaking down either the door or the window.

Yet, he ached so badly to feel the half-demon's skin against his, the temptingly embraceable sleekness of his body beneath his, those rosy lips under his mouth – or better yet, wrapped around that certain part of him which was calling for attention _right now_.

Then again, Inuyasha had accused him of using him like a whore – the foolish boy – did he not know the difference between being treated like a lover and being treated like a paid prostitute or a lowly pleasure slave? Firstly, Sesshomaru had no need of paid whores – a king did not purchase his sexual pleasures that way. As for slaves, such individuals were purely there to be fucked and used and then told to leave – and Sesshomaru had not needed any slaves around for years, especially since his bath and chamber servants were all so comely and so eager to serve him in the most intimate ways.

He had never caressed anyone as he had Inuyasha, never held them as he slept, never permitted them to remain overnight with him, never pleasured them while leaving himself unsatisfied, and certainly never whispered passionate nothings to them as they lay in his arms.

However, the silly boy was hardly in a state of mind to think sensibly at this moment, and if Sesshomaru demanded his presence in his bedroom, he would only accuse him again of using him like a sex object. At this thought, Sesshomaru paused, for his conscience was pricking him to admit that he had indeed regarded Inuyasha as a toy on their first night together. But that had changed very quickly, and he had done his utmost – within reason – to show Inuyasha that he was not merely a plaything.

There would be no convincing the child of that tonight, unfortunately. Even if he had brought his temper under control by now, and would yield to some foreplay and lovemaking, he would be thinking those unacceptable thoughts as he went through the motions, and Sesshomaru had no wish whatsoever to see that accusing message glaring out at him through those enormous, hurting, golden eyes.

He thought about summoning his bath and chamber servants so that he could at least get some physical relief through them – he had not used them at all since Inuyasha's arrival. He was on the point of calling out to one of the guards to summon the servant on duty at the end of the corridor, who would convey his orders to the relevant individuals, when a tiny stirring in his heart stopped him. It seemed to say to him: _If you use your pleasure servants whenever the one you claim to be your lover is unavailable, does that not show that you put your lover on the same level as the ones you merely use for pleasure?_

Sesshomaru did not know where such an absurd idea had come from – he had used whomever he pleased, privately drawing his own fine distinctions between his treatment of pleasure slaves from his past, his present servants, the guests he had sex with for their mutual amusement, and other important individuals he bedded for political reasons. At no time had he thought that using any one of them in the absence of the others was in any way at all putting them on the same level.

The tiny voice was quiet now after having had its say, but its echoes continued to needle him the way that uncomfortable feeling had left him uneasy from the moment he had seen his brother cry.

He could hardly believe that he was choosing to obey the voice, but obey it he did as he dipped into his bath for a quick wash, then with a grunt of irritation, planted himself face-down onto his bed for another frustrating night all alone. There was no point in punishing himself by lying on his back to stare sleeplessly at the painting over his bed – it would only mock him.


	13. Going Backwards

The prince would not be making an appearance for breakfast, Sesshomaru brusquely informed the servant in the dining hall who was arranging the cutlery at Inuyasha's place at the table.

The demon lord had personally pounded on his brother's door this morning, after hearing the repeated soft pleas of Natsumi, who was standing in the corridor and knocking gently on the firmly barred entrance of the prince's bedchamber.

At the sound of the heavier fist thumping against the solid wood, a coarse, snappish cry of "Fuck off!" issued from deep inside the room, and in fury, Sesshomaru had swept out of the corridor, his demon spirit-energy crackling almost audibly. Downstairs in the dining hall, he dropped into his chair at the head of the table and drank his tea in great, angry gulps.

How dare that ungrateful creature behave so petulantly and disrespectfully? Sesshomaru asked himself, quite forgetting that he had wished to see Inuyasha's personality as it truly was. He, supreme monarch over all dog demons other than his royal dam, king of all canine demons, and ruler of this vast kingdom populated by nearly every demon species, had been compassionate and tolerant, even _tender_ towards this half-brother of his, and the brat was now refusing to show his face or even answer him politely?

This was outrageous. The boy deserved a slap on the face at the very least, and preferably a thorough spanking followed by some practical lessons on how best his uncouth, delicious mouth could be put to good use. If that still didn't knock sense into him, Sesshomaru had lots of other interesting ideas in his bag of half-demon-taming tricks.

The ingrate! He had shown him such consideration and restraint, given him a night to himself – which he had gleefully taken and then extended to a second night of his own accord, just because of some insolent servant's well-deserved punishment, even though he must have known that his lord brother would be desirous of his company. And this was how he was repaid? What a thoughtless brat.

As he finished his final cup of tea, Sesshomaru sent a servant to the library to inform Jaken that his student would not be attending his lessons this morning, then took himself off to his office, where he busied himself with work, but failed to completely take his mind off Inuyasha. Each time the boy's words of accusation, anger and bitterness sprang to mind, he slammed a drawer shut or thumped his desk, and generally behaved like a spoilt and demanding potentate who was letting his temper get the better of him.

His military and administrative staff steered clear of his office that day – the sound of his growls and the scent and aura of his anger filling the entire corridor were enough to make even the sentries on duty there wish they could sidle discreetly away from their posts.

Had Sesshomaru been able to govern his temper and lust as one who considered himself a great monarch and leader ought, the situation might not have deteriorated. Unfortunately, his seething anger grew when Inuyasha refused once more to appear for dinner, and his vexation was magnified by the quantity of wine he drank alone at table.

When he went upstairs that night and pounded on the door again, only to receive an obstinate silence for reply, that was when he allowed his anger to get the better of him and undo all that he had been working to achieve with his brother since bringing him home. In a cold voice harsh with disappointment and injured dignity, Sesshomaru snapped furiously: "I should have known better than to try and treat you well, you worthless, undeserving half-breed!"

The instant the words left his mouth, Sesshomaru knew that he should not have spoken them, that he did not truly mean them, and he had permitted his anger to speak for him – a foolish move for one who took such pride in having no master but himself. But it was too late. He could not take them back now, for Inuyasha had heard them only too clearly.

A deathly silence followed those painful words, only to be followed in its turn by the young prince's raging response at the top of his lungs: "So that's what you REALLY think of me – as if I didn't know before! At least you can stop pretending to care about me now, you screwed-up fuckhead!"

The guards along the corridor of the royal wing wanted nothing more than to shrivel up and vanish on the spot, because they could not believe the outrageous rudeness they were hearing, directed from their prince to their king, and they almost shook from the terror of anticipating Sesshomaru's reaction. Their demon lord had claws filled with venom, which he had in the past employed at the least provocation, and it was looking as if they were currently in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But Sesshomaru did not blow up or melt down everything in sight. He did not even answer the prince, or pound on the door again. He merely stood there in silence for several unnerving moments, then turned on his heel and swept into his own bedroom, shutting the door firmly behind him.

He might have chosen not to continue the argument, but the demon lord was not prepared to repent. His stubborn pride reigned though he knew full well that he should not have said what he did to Inuyasha, no matter how much the boy had angered him. Instead, he elected to drown his unease and unhappiness, and wash away his tension in the manner he best knew how – by summoning all his bath servants.

…

He still did not know their names. He remembered one or two here and there, but had never bothered to match them to their faces. He only knew them as "the one with gold hair", "the salamander demon with the bronze skin", "the dog demon girl with the blue eyes", "the tall one with the good hands" and whatever else distinguished them. Those far-from-comprehensive descriptions were all he had ever needed to summon whichever servants he wanted – those in attendance would always collect and deliver the right ones to him somehow.

He had in fact never remembered Natsumi's name in all the years she had served him, referring to her instead as "the quiet racoon girl". He had made a point of finding out what she was called and committing it to memory only when he identified her as the best personal attendant he could choose for Inuyasha; from that time, he had not forgotten it.

These servants, however, who fell over themselves to delight and arouse him while remaining suitably quiet, were still one multi-limbed mass of more-or-less nameless faces and bodies, a perfect contrast to the reluctant half-demon who had barricaded himself into his room.

Sesshomaru lapsed easily into his old ways as they fawned wordlessly on him in the bathroom, soaking up all their adoration and attention without having to say a thing to them, or to concern himself about how they were feeling, or wonder what they were thinking. It was marvellous not to have to care about any of that. After six days of delicately manipulating Inuyasha and puzzling over how to conquer the lad without breaking him, he had almost forgotten how to mindlessly indulge in nothing more than physical pleasure.

He leaned back in the sunken bath with his body and long legs in the water, and his head and arms draped over the warm, slightly rough stone tiles that paved the floor and edged the bath. The gold-tressed fox demon girl knelt on the floor behind him and skilfully massaged a herbal solution with a pleasing scent into his scalp and every inch of his long, silver hair; while the tall, good-looking and exotic tiger demon lad worked the kinks out of his right shoulder and arm, firmly pushing his strong fingers – claws well retracted – into all the appropriate acupressure points. He would move over to the left arm soon, and afterwards to the rest of Sesshomaru's body.

The blue-eyed dog-demon girl sat across from him in the water, resting on one of the stone seats that were built into the sides of the bath. His right foot was in her lap, and she was massaging the sole, toes and lower leg before she would go on to his other foot and his thighs. In the meantime, the sleek little salamander demon, who could breathe underwater, was making himself most useful deep inside the bath by diligently applying his mouth and the seductive strokes of his clever fingers to that part of Sesshomaru's anatomy which had been aching for Inuyasha's hands, Inuyasha's lips, Inuyasha's ass, for two entire days now without any relief.

Another pair of slender, flexible snake demons with gleaming silver skin contorted themselves into bizarrely erotic positions, and caressed, licked and aroused each other on the other side of the bathroom, providing visual entertainment for their king whenever he chose to open his eyes and glance over at them. A lizard demon in the corner played background music on a string instrument.

And they all served him with pure eagerness and openness to him, baring their bodies and accessorising their perfect submissiveness with perfect smiles.

Yet, as Sesshomaru immersed himself in these mindless pleasures, stimulated in countless ways at once, the name that kept intruding on his mindlessness was Inuyasha, Inuyasha, _Inuyasha_. The image of his beautiful, childlike face, wide-eyed as he lay beneath Sesshomaru in his bed, flashed in his head, and suddenly Sesshomaru was ejaculating into the salamander's skilled, eager mouth, climaxing quietly, with little more than a throaty exhalation of breath, but in his imagination, he was crying out his brother's name, burying his face in his hair, seeking out his appealingly soft-furred ears with his lips.

A while later, and he was still thinking of the half-demon, even when he had turned over in his bath so that he now rested his head on his arms over the warm stone as the tiger demon slipped easily into the water with nary a ripple and started massaging his back. The salamander boy was assiduously licking and lapping at the sensitive zones of his chest from below, and his hair had been gathered up to one side and was being carefully rinsed from the scalp down by the fox attendant. The blue-eyed girl dipped into the water in the centre of the bath to knead the backs of his thighs, coming up every now and again for air.

Sesshomaru was growing physically aroused again – the snake demons had slithered across the room to be within his line of sight, and the male, who had not one but _two_ penises, as was common among his species, was now forcing his female partner down on her back, arching her over a bench, spreading her legs wide and thrusting deep into her with one long, thick member while the other pushed into her posterior orifice – and the sight was turning Sesshomaru on all over again, filling him with a sexual aggressiveness he had suppressed for a good while.

The salamander's attentions were not enough this time. He did a good job as always, but after several minutes Sesshomaru shoved him away, seized the blue-eyed attendant, heaved her halfway out of the water, pushed her face-down over the edge of the bath, and without any preamble penetrated her roughly. She cried out from the suddenness and violence of it despite her desire to please him; her cries only aroused him all the more, appealing to that cruel streak in his nature that had never quite died even after he did his best to subdue it upon realising the full extent of his tree-godfather's disapproval.

He came inside her without fear of impregnating her and eventually producing some bastard pup, for this dog demon girl had been born sterile, yet had developed into a flawlessly beautiful creature with a deceptively ripe and nubile appearance – rendering her perfect as a pleasure servant. Stirred up by the violent motions, the bathwater lapped in sharp waves around his hips, and as they died down he pulled out of her. He abruptly felt weary and sick of this whole circus surrounding him.

"Get out," he ordered in a low voice that bristled with fatigue. "All of you."

With perfect obedience, all seven took their robes and withdrew swiftly from the bathroom in seconds, watched by the guards at the chamber door as they crossed the bedroom floor, dripping wet.

Sesshomaru remained in the bath for a few more minutes to wash off the traces of his most recent act of copulation, and waited until the muted sounds coming from his bedroom indicated that the room attendants had almost finished their job of wiping up the trail of water left on the wood flooring by the bath servants.

A single word from him was enough to bring one of them to the bathroom door, bowing deeply. Sesshomaru ordered him to find Natsumi and send her here. He waited until all the room servants had left and the racoon demon had arrived, and the guards had shut his bedroom door behind her. He stepped out of the bath, thoroughly soaked from the top of his head down to his toes. Without having to be told, Natsumi immediately picked up a set of clean towels and started to dry his hair and body, first pressing as much water as she could out of his lengthy mane. He sat down on the bench the snake demons had used and let her go about her work quietly, not saying a word to her.

When his hair was as dry as the towelling and gentle wringing could get it, and she was starting to comb it, he asked: "Has he opened his door or windows at all?"

"No, my lord," she replied quietly.

He rose and allowed her to tie a soft bathrobe about his body before he walked into his bedroom, followed by Natsumi armed with combs and more towels.

He seated himself on the edge of his bed, and indicated with a minuscule toss of his head that she was permitted to kneel on the bed behind him in order to continue combing his hair. Her gentleness soothed him, but also brought to mind Inuyasha's reticence whenever he was in this bedroom with him – a reticence that was the complete opposite of what Sesshomaru realised was his true nature. He had wished to see the boy's natural behaviour, and now he was seeing too much of it, complete with foul language, a hot temper and an ungovernable attitude.

By the time Natsumi was done with his hair, and he dismissed her, he was a good deal calmer inside – he supposed that being in contact with his brother's personal servant was the next best thing to having the boy beside him. But Inuyasha was still not here in his bed, and that would keep him unhappy for as long as this ridiculous situation dragged on.

…

On the other side of the wall, Inuyasha had seethed through the evening. If he had known that it was going to come to this – that he was going to end up locking himself into his room and screaming abuse at Sesshomaru – he would have told the creep to fuck off right from the start.

After all, Sesshomaru had only said that he had to come back to this stupid castle and stay here – he hadn't said anything about obeying him in every single other way, had he? So, considering that he was now confined to his chamber and had hugely pissed off the demon lord, he might as well have done that from the beginning instead of submitting quietly to the bastard's perversions. It would all have ended the same way anyhow – with him locked up somewhere or other and Sesshomaru regarding him with the contempt with which he had always looked upon him.

 _Half-breed._ Sesshomaru had never called him that to his face before, but it must have been how he had thought of him before he was born, while he had been a child, and when he had lived away from the castle. He had heard the derogatory term all his life – from demons and humans who despised him for being neither one thing nor the other – but he had always brushed it off because those who mocked and cursed him knew nothing about him, and had never pretended to care.

However, the elaborate act that the demon lord had put on to convince him that he actually cared about him as a lover and brother had very nearly persuaded Inuyasha that he somehow meant _something_ to Sesshomaru, and he now perceived the words coming from his brother's mouth as having an exceptional sting to them. Well, that demon sibling of his could end his pretence now – it had obviously been no more than a pathetic, sick way of keeping him quiet enough to take to bed with minimal fuss. Deep down, what Sesshomaru had thought all along was just what he had said: _worthless, undeserving half-breed_.

A part of Inuyasha – that part of him which remained the cowed, intimidated child tiptoeing around the castle – wanted to cry. But the other half of him – the stronger, wary, more cynical half – hardened his heart and mind against Sesshomaru and protected his feelings by thinking of the demon lord as no more than a lecherous tyrant who deserved not a kind thought from him. He took out his mother's hair ornament and Bokusen'o's leaf, and put them onto his folded fire rat robe, then lay down on his bed with those comforting objects on his chest, drawing courage from them as the sounds and smells from next door intruded on his privacy.

Of course the pervert was indulging in his old pastimes again with his bath servants, going by the noises that came through the walls, and the scents of arousal and sex that wafted through the finely worked slats of his window shutters and under his door. He was probably releasing all his tension after getting turned on by what he had done to that idiot Mamoru. That stupid boy had always been a horrible bully and thoroughly unpleasant, but even he didn't deserve that sort of treatment. Sesshomaru got off on that kind of thing?

What a creep.

When things suddenly got completely quiet next door, Inuyasha wondered if Sesshomaru had abruptly melted down all his servants in a toxic pique. But he soon heard scurrying feet along the corridor, and caught Natsumi's scent later. All seemed calm, so he guessed the servants had survived.

He nibbled on one of the rice-and-seaweed biscuits he had stashed away in his desk drawer after Jaken had told him to take them with him after their lesson the day before yesterday. The bites staved off his hunger pangs, but he was not particularly worried about having nothing else to eat, for there had been miserable times in his past when he had lived through several days without anything that remotely resembled edible food, and he could do the same now.

He would find a way out of here somehow without compromising the safety of his human friends. And then he would never have to see Sesshomaru again.

Before that thought could cheer him, however, Sesshomaru's voice rang out again in his mind: _worthless, undeserving half-breed_. And Inuyasha was still enough of a child to bury his face in his pillow and shed some angry tears over it.


	14. Hunger

The dawn of a new day found the demon lord in neither the mood nor mental condition to deal with what lay ahead. He was emotionally unsettled, physically irritable and psychologically weary, and that was never a good state to be in when one had to cope with the presence of guests one did not particularly care for.

Queen Abi of the demon birds had sent a letter to Sesshomaru a few weeks ago – well before Inuyasha's return – to request that he permit free passage over or through his lands to a delegation she would be sending first to the bears in the north, then to the dragons in the north-east. She would be most grateful if Sesshomaru would allow them to return home through the western lands.

Lord Sesshomaru's kingdom was the western kingdom in name, but in truth, it stretched from west to east, and the demon birds would have to fly either unfeasibly high to keep out of the neighbouring kingdoms' airspace in order to get home, or take a lengthy detour over the ocean, if the demon lord was not kind enough to grant them passage.

At the time, he had dashed off a reply that they might do as they pleased, provided that they kept their blood-drinking demon bird-beasts in check and forbade them to feast on the humans that lived and worked in his kingdom, for they were all officially under his protection. Privately, he remembered the difficulty he and his father had in the past in preventing their own demon tribes from victimising the human population, succeeding in putting a stop to it only in his reign, when he finally convinced the carnivorous demons that they would benefit more from the products of the humans' farming skills than from gobbling up the people themselves.

In response to his positive reply, Queen Abi had insisted that her ambassador should also pay him a visit at his castle to express their gratitude, and reinforce the ties between the two kingdoms. Sesshomaru was very familiar with the ambassador, Tsubasa, as he had on several occasions over the last two hundred years allowed her into his bed – or found his way into hers.

She was a cousin of Queen Abi's, and as beautiful as her monarch, but far less hawkish. It had suited Sesshomaru before to amuse himself with her company, but this day – the day she and her demons and bird-beasts were expected to arrive – was not a good time for such frivolous activities. Not when Sesshomaru's head felt like it would explode from the previous days' mixture of anger, debauchery and no Inuyasha.

But it was important to receive the delegation, or risk spawning rumours about his well-being. So in the afternoon, when his scouts on their dragons and flying steeds reported that the demon birds were on their way, he and two of his dog-demon ministers – the one responsible for diplomatic liaisons with the neighbouring kingdoms, and another who oversaw the treasury but who was personally familiar with Tsubasa's vice-ambassadors – entered his throne room, close to the dining hall in which he had earlier ordered a suitable feast to be laid out for the visitors.

From a window, they saw the delegation approaching by air. One glance told him that the group numbered twenty bird demons, each mounted on a large bird-beast. Although the bird-demon delegates themselves all had the power of flight, for longer journeys, they preferred to ride their beasts to conserve their strength.

Sesshomaru's own military commanders had sent five strong escorts on dragons to ensure that none of the bloodthirsty beasts peeled away from the group to feast on anyone in the demon lord's lands.

Sesshomaru was not particularly pleased with the presence of the visitors, even under escort, for he knew that their appearance was striking fear into the hearts of the humans and the herbivorous demons on the ground – those birds had been known to drain entire communities of their blood in times when they had needed vast quantities of it for feeding and healing their own people.

But he put his feelings of displeasure aside when the group reached the castle and left the beasts to be corralled under watch in one of the fields. Having seen to their mounts, the ambassador and her train of demons stepped into the throne room.

Tsubasa was as beautiful as ever, Sesshomaru thought, when she appeared before him at the head of her group, radiant with her translucent skin, brilliantly dark eyes and flowing black hair. But only his objective perceptions recorded her beauty; nothing else stirred within him today when he set eyes on her, not when she seemed to his heart to pale in comparison with that vile-mouthed half-demon who refused to come out of his room, but whose golden eyes still filled Sesshomaru's mind with light.

"Lord Sesshomaru," Tsubasa addressed him humbly yet with a sparkling air of playfulness, as she bowed deeply to him, her assistants and attendants following suit behind her with even deeper bows. "We are truly grateful for your kindness. On behalf of my queen and her people, I thank you for permitting us to travel through your lands. As promised, we have kept our birds in check and have forbidden them to harm a single one of your subjects – human, demon or beast."

"I would not have granted you passage otherwise, and the commanders of my army have been instructed to ensure that your birds remain on their best behaviour as long as they are within my lands," Sesshomaru said in reply.

Another ambassador might have been cowed or put off by his unwelcoming tone, but Tsubasa had been intimate enough with him in the past to look upon this as no more than a challenge to warm him up again.

So in the course of their afternoon repast and their conversation about things in general, she was at her most charming, amusing and seductive. Sesshomaru was still nursing a headache, and was annoyed that Inuyasha could not be present to learn a thing or two about maintaining diplomatic ties, but going with the flow of Tsubasa's inviting ways was a sight better than continuing to brood over his brother.

He was thus composed enough when Tsubasa mentioned Inuyasha: "I hear that a younger brother of Your Majesty's has returned home after many years away?" Ambassadors always had ways of finding things out.

Sesshomaru merely replied: "My brother has returned home. He is, however, indisposed at present, so I excused him from attending today's meetings."

Speaking of Inuyasha brought an ache into his heart, but he could not discern if it was a pang of muted anger or the pain of longing.

"Ah, what a pity – it would have been my honour to have met any brother of Your Majesty's," Tsubasa said. "Lord Sesshomaru must love his brother very much to take such good care of him. But I hope that my company on this day will make up in some small way for his not being in your presence as much as you would like?"

Sesshomaru did not respond to that, but he held her playful, dark eyes with his own cool gaze. After the meal, he did not object when they left the dining room for a meeting chamber, and she walked close enough to him to brush against him as they made their way along the corridors of the castle. It was a not-entirely-unpleasant distraction from his thoughts about how to solve the stalemate with Inuyasha.

By evening, he was receptive enough to her advances to accept her suggestion that they have a private dinner in her chambers within the guest wing, while her vice-ambassadors and other delegates enjoyed their feast in the dining hall with his two ministers.

They repaired to the guest wing together just as the sun was setting, and as they moved along the open galleries and passageways, they noticed that the bird-beasts were becoming restless, and that the demon lord's guards in charge of the fields had immediately begun standing by on high alert the moment the beasts started fretting.

"Get them to settle down at once," Tsubasa ordered one of her personal attendants, who hurried out into the field to help calm the beasts. Turning to Sesshomaru, she apologised, saying: "I'm afraid they sometimes get agitated when made to rest in an unfamiliar place, or if the wind carries the scent of prey to them. However, we made certain to feed them well with the supplies we caught outside your lands, so their bellies are full, and they should be calm enough soon."

Once she had dismissed her attendants and was alone with Sesshomaru in her chambers, there was no time for dinner, for neither of them was hungry for food. Tsubasa's eyes, however, devoured the beautiful demon lord with a look that suggested it had been far too long since she had had an opportunity to taste him. She shut the door and closed the windows with no apparent hurry, but once that was done, in the next moment she was pressing her lips to his hands, his chin and his lips, and he permitted her to proceed.

That was encouragement enough for her. She slipped off her clothes seductively, one layer at a time, until she wore no more than a transparent, shimmering violet shift. Sesshomaru looked upon her beauty and confidence with a growing appreciation. He had subservient females aplenty in his castle, and had gone through nearly all of them that were worth his attention, but it was not often that he had the time to be with a female who was closer to him in rank, with whom he could interact on a more equal level.

An ambassador for a powerful race of demons, and the cousin of a queen, came close enough.

Sesshomaru slipped a hand round to the back of her neck and pulled her towards him, then cupped her ripe, succulent bottom with his other hand and lifted her enough to deposit her on the bed. She laughed as she fell back onto the mattress, pulling him down with her by grasping his robe with both her hands.

He was straddling her body now, leaning down to take deep sniffs of her neck, mouth, breasts and crotch, going past the scent of her arousal to determine if she was in heat, or approaching a risky part of her cycle. Satisfied that she was nowhere near the fertile segment of her reproductive cycle, and knowing that her species was not capable of internally storing a male's sperm for later impregnation, he chose to proceed. He would have stopped had it been otherwise, for he had no intention of allowing just any female – even one of high rank – to bear his child and possibly use its existence for leverage against him.

He lifted the hem of her violet shift and drew it up, unveiling her body, until the transparent hem and skirt of the garment were over her head. He rested the fabric over her face and kissed her mouth through it, making her smile at his employment of this scarcely noteworthy barrier, as if he wished to communicate that he was keeping a symbolic curtain between them.

She was less interested than he was in barriers, however, so without moving from where she lay, her nimble fingers got to work on his attire, unknotting sashes, unfastening ties and unwrapping layers, until his robe fell open and she could touch the skin of his chest and firmly muscled abdomen before slipping her hand into his trousers to stroke the powerful lines and curves of his hips and buttocks. And still he would not shed all his clothing, leaving the layers on but open at the front, as he made her arch her back and belly upwards by sucking none too gently at her nipples and applying a rhythmic pressure to the moist lips between her thighs with the palm of his hand.

Reaching down, Tsubasa ran feather-light touches over his scrotal sac that made him groan throatily, and applied a firmer grip when her fingers closed over his throbbing, swollen member. When it seemed that he was ready to thrust into her, she withdrew her hand and tucked her hips down, pulling away from him, teasing him.

With a growl of desire, he slid his body down over hers and retaliated by gripping her thighs hard and spreading her wide, exposing her completely to his eyes while her shift remained draped over her face. She laughed again, letting him look upon her all he wanted, until he buried his mouth, lips and tongue between her gaping legs, and began gliding their salivary-wet heat roughly and skilfully over this blood-flushed, intensely sensitive part of her anatomy.

That was when her claws worked into the bedsheets beneath her, and she cried out with pleasure in response to his commanding, almost brutal expertise. Unlike many females, Tsubasa had no appreciation for tenderness in the bedroom, or gentle foreplay, and Sesshomaru knew this well. He might not have matched his actions to her preferences for her sake, but in this case, roughness suited him as well as it did her.

On the verge of climaxing under his tongue, Tsubasa gasped with frustration to feel that warm, wet muscle pull away from her, only to gasp again when he abruptly pushed his hard, swollen member deep into the aching sheath guarded by her nether lips. He still kept one hand there, however, lightly kneading her as he thrust steadily in and out of her, until she was digging her claws deep into the mattress and crying out. She came violently, bucking under him, held down by his other hand pinning her wrist to the bed.

When he saw that she was physically satisfied enough to no longer require the touch of his finger down below, he moved to grip her other arm so that he now held both her wrists on either side of her head, using them in turn to keep the fabric of the shift in position over her face. He continued plunging into her and holding her arms down until she felt herself coming a second time, and as she climaxed, he allowed himself to come, shooting his seed into her empty womb, where it would neither take hold nor bear fruit.

His tension now released, he recovered his composure before pulling out of her and returning to the position of straddling her. He looked down at her uncovered body and covered face for a moment, then secured his trousers and got to his feet.

"Efficient as ever, Lord Sesshomaru," Tsubasa said softly, but with a hint of a smile in her voice, as she drew the transparent fabric off her face. "But also masterful and perfect as always."

He did not answer, but continued to meet her eyes as he adjusted his robes back into place and fastened them.

"I know better than to ask you to stay the night, but perhaps you will honour me with your company for the meal that is ready on the table in any case?" she proposed.

She sat up before rising from the bed and letting the shift fall back in place around her body and hips, utterly unabashed about being nearly as good as naked while he was fully clothed again and done with her for the night. He noticed a line of his semen starting to run down her left inner thigh, and followed its passage with some fascination, until noises from under the window distracted him.

"It's those beasts again!" Tsubasa muttered in annoyance and concern, crossing the room and throwing the windows open, not caring that her body beneath its see-through covering would be on display to whoever was outside.

They looked out into a moonless night to see the twenty bird-beasts stirring in the field beyond, until three of them grew restless enough to take to the air and fly across the field. Sesshomaru's dragon-mounted guards were beside them in moments, but they had already reached the royal wing adjacent to this guest wing, and starting to batter at the closed windows… of Inuyasha's bedroom.

Sesshomaru stared at the beasts, then glanced up into the moonless sky, and all of a sudden, he was moving quickly to the room door.

"Get your birds under control, ambassador," he ordered curtly as he left. "Their behaviour is unacceptable."

"At once, Your Majesty," she said demurely, hiding her bewilderment well, for she had no idea what had come over the birds.

Once out of her sight, Sesshomaru moved so swiftly through the corridors towards the royal wing that he was all but running. Fortunately, he passed only his own servants along the way, for the entire visiting delegation apart from Tsubasa had gone outdoors to calm their beasts.

 _How could he have forgotten? How could he have allowed this to happen without taking greater precautions?_

It was, of course, the night of the new moon, when Inuyasha would be fully human. Sesshomaru had always known of his brother's lunar-determined life rhythms, but he had forgotten it on this occasion, of all times. Even the servants who had been here from when Inuyasha lived in the castle as a child did not know, for the princess had always kept her little son shut up with her in her room at this time of month, and the thick room doors as well as her own human scent helped to cover his and disguise it from the staff.

Sesshomaru had known all along without having to be told because his nose was sharper than most. His servants might not have been able to smell anything unusual, but he himself had caught the scent without effort right from the very first month of the child's life. He had chosen to keep his brother's secret – not because he had cared for him in those days, but because he considered it a family matter that was none of the servants' concern.

Now Inuyasha was vulnerable and alone in his room, without the legitimate excuse of his mother's presence to hide his scent; and the demon bird-beasts, whose noses were particularly attuned to what they liked to feed on, were stirred to throw themselves at his windows in response to the irresistible temptation of his full-human blood which screamed "prey" to them. The boy must be terrified.

"My lord!" the guards in the royal wing called to him as he appeared. "The birds are attacking His Highness' room from outside!"

 _Tell me something I do not know,_ Sesshomaru snarled to himself as he pushed past the guards and into his own bedroom, where he growled loudly out of his windows at the beasts, and snapped at the bird demons to control them, or he would cut them down with his claws.

The visiting demons flew up towards their mounts and hastened to clap thicker collars round the long necks of the winged beasts, to force them back to ground. They quickly leashed them and led them away from the royal wing, back to the field where they had been resting earlier. Sesshomaru barked orders at the guards in charge of the fields to ensure that the birds were tethered to the ground with unbreakable chains and stakes driven deep, then he swept out into the corridor again and made his demon energy flare so powerfully that the guards almost recoiled. They assumed that it was because he was enraged by the unseemly ruckus outside the royal wing, and with Inuyasha for locking himself up. But the demon lord had done it to conceal his brother's human scent, which would surely come through once the door was open. And to get past that door, he broke it down with a single kick, shattering the cupboards and cabinets the boy had piled behind the entrance.

He could have used the secret passage with far less destruction and noise, but he still did not wish to reveal its existence to his brother, for he knew that at this time, it would only make Inuyasha feel even more vulnerable, and increase his anger towards him. He also did not want the servants to learn that he had hidden ways of accessing his brother's bedroom – which they would quickly work out if he entered his own room and then mysteriously appeared in the prince's chamber.

Inuyasha was not anywhere in sight in the bedroom. Sesshomaru's nose told him at once that he was in the bathroom. Before he went in there, he picked up two large screens – solid lacquerwork ones, unlike their open-carved counterparts in the demon lord's bedroom – and positioned them in the doorway as a makeshift barrier to give him and the boy privacy. At the same time, he ordered the guards to summon one of the housekeeping staff to repair the door at once. He told them strictly that they were to repair the broken door immediately, but without shifting the screens or coming round them at all, or he would have their hides for it.

As two of the four guards in the corridor rushed off to find someone who could fix the door quickly, Sesshomaru strode into the bathroom, wondering exactly what condition Inuyasha was in, and what toll the birds' assault on his windows had taken on him.

Although he had expected his brother to be traumatised, Sesshomaru was still shocked to find the boy immersed almost up to his nose in the sunken bath in a desperate attempt to conceal his scent in the water, steeped in its unheated depths for what must have been hours, shivering with cold and sickness. No, not just cold and sickness, but also days of hunger, the fear of being a powerless full-human in a nest of carnivorous demons without his mother to protect his secret, and the terror of hearing those bloodthirsty winged beasts beating against his shuttered windows.

He was shivering so hard, and looked so ill. With his human eyes, he could not possibly see Sesshomaru standing there now, on the edge of the sunken bath, for the bathroom and bedroom were completely unlit. He must have thought that his elder brother would leave him here to die on this moonless night, to have his blood drained by the birds. He probably did not even know that Sesshomaru had always known his secret.

"Inuyasha?" Sesshomaru said softly, noting now that the boy was clad in his red fire rat robe. It had long been his armour and his security, and he must have pulled it on the moment he turned human and heard the birds stirring outside.

The boy did not answer. His gray eyes darted around frantically, seeing nothing in the darkness. Sesshomaru realised now that even if he had been able to see in the dark, he might not fully grasp what was going on, for he seemed not to recognise his voice. His pale face was framed by a spill of jet-black hair which hid rounded human ears, while his hands with their blunt fingernails gripped the side of the bath.

Sesshomaru waded into the water, and the ripples that lapped gently against Inuyasha made him aware that someone else was in the bath with him.

"Inuyasha, it's me," Sesshomaru said gently, reaching out for him.

His hand closed over Inuyasha's upper arm to draw him away from the wall of the bath. That was when all hell broke loose, as his brother suddenly exploded into a red bundle of terror and rage, screaming, kicking, biting and clawing blindly at him, his instincts telling him to fight off this predator that had him in its grip, while his fevered mind saw nothing, knew nothing and understood nothing.

"My lord?" the guards called out from beyond the door, startled by the prince's screams.

"Keep out of the room!" Sesshomaru roared. "Get that door fixed!"

He jumped out of the bath, clutching a dripping-wet, freezing cold and hysterical Inuyasha to his chest and pinning his arms to his sides, bearing with his kicking feet and those tiny human teeth trying to sink into his flesh, holding him as close and still as he possibly could, while softly going on and on in a steady voice: "Inuyasha, be calm. It's me, Sesshomaru. I won't hurt you. No one will hurt you. I won't allow anyone to harm you. Shhh. Be still."

He soothed him, spoke gently to him and held him securely until at last Inuyasha quieted and sagged limply in his arms. Sesshomaru's relief that he had calmed down was, however, outweighed by concern over his limpness and apparent unconsciousness. So he bore his precious little burden into the bedroom, where he vowed silently to do what he could to heal him and make things right somehow.


	15. Turning Point

Sesshomaru laid Inuyasha down in one corner of the bed, snatched up a thick woollen blanket, and tucked it around the boy's sopping-wet form. Reluctant to take more than two steps from him, yet urgently needing to check on the progress of the door repairs, he continued to keep his own demon energy flaring powerfully to mask Inuyasha's scent, and went round the broken furniture and the screens to see if the door was almost back in place.

"How much longer will you take?" Sesshomaru asked the burly monkey-demon worker who had just hoisted the door back onto its hinges and whose assistant was already working on the lock.

"We only need to tighten these hinges and put this new latch on the door, my lord," the worker replied as steadily as he could in these circumstances, under the pressure of the lord's terrible demon-energy buffeting his own weaker aura.

"Good. Finish the job quickly – any further fine-tuning can wait for another day," he said. To the guards, he gave these instructions: "Once they are done, shut the door and keep it shut. No one is to enter this room tonight, under any circumstances."

To the servant stationed at the end of the passageway, he gave instructions to tell those in charge of the furnaces to heat the prince's bath and keep it hot for the remainder of the night and throughout the next morning. He hoped some of the resulting heat from the bathroom would add to the warmth of the bedroom; perhaps Inuyasha would feel better if he could soak in the hot water later.

But for now, he went back round the screens and returned to Inuyasha's bed, where he checked on his brother's condition. The boy's eyes were open, but no longer darting around; instead, he stared blankly into the darkness. When he touched his forehead, he found it hot even though his body was chilled and shivering.

Sesshomaru cursed quietly to himself, and waited till he heard the door close. He then strode across the room again, put the latch down, and went over to a chest in which he had hidden a fresh batch of candles and matchsticks several months ago, at a time when he was still planning for Inuyasha's return and had thought to cater for the needs of his human nights as well.

He had simply neglected to tell Inuyasha where the candles were hidden, and forgotten that this would be the first night he would be human after his return to his old home.

He struck a match and lit two of the longest tapers, stuck them into metal holders which he set down on one of the undamaged cabinets, and hurried back to Inuyasha's side.

"Inuyasha?" he said softly. "I need you to sit up. Can you do that?"

He did not respond, so Sesshomaru raised him into a sitting position and removed the blanket he had wrapped around him earlier. Fortunately, the blanket had done a fair job of protecting the bed from the water that was still seeping out of every inch of the lad's clothing and hair, so the mattress would be still dry and warm enough for Inuyasha to lie back down on again after this.

"I need to take your wet robes off," he said calmly. "We must remove them so that you won't catch a worse chill than you already have, do you understand me?"

The boy seemed to be looking at him now out of the depths of his strangely grayish eyes with hints of violet flecks dancing in the candlelight, but Sesshomaru was not sure how much he was taking in. He hated himself a little for having taught him to associate undressing with nothing other than foreplay and sex, and he was well aware that he might send him into hysterics again by undoing his clothes, but there was no help for it now. He had to get on with the job, and quickly, before his brother's condition worsened.

He undid the tightly knotted ties as swiftly as he could, and stripped the layers off, doing his best to keep his movements neutral and calm and to touch the boy's skin as little as possible.

When he had removed all his upper clothing and dropped it to the carpet, along with a leaf that had for some reason been tucked between the layers, he looked into Inuyasha's face again and said softly: "Can you stand? We must get your trousers off too – I don't want you to become any sicker."

He took Inuyasha's arm and drew him carefully forward and up, until he was on his feet on the carpet. The boy remained standing unaided, but did not react as he untied his trousers and the trouser underlayer, and peeled them off his legs, to which they clung. He sat Inuyasha back down on the edge of the mattress and disentangled his feet from the wet garments pooled around his ankles.

Sesshomaru then made him lie down and bundled him up in the thick quilt cover, adding the woollen blanket over it as an extra layer. In the process, he discovered the cloisonné hairpin that had belonged to Inuyasha's mother caught amongst the folds of the quilt, and put it carefully aside on a nearby chest. Then he took a pile of towels from the bathroom and slipped one of them onto the pillow, raising his brother's head slightly to get it under him so that it could soak up the water that was still dripping off the ends of the tangled tresses. With another towel, he pressed and patted at what he could reach of his dark hair.

Some minutes later, he discarded the wet towels and used fresh, dry ones in their place. The steam from the water had filled the bathroom by this time, and was imparting some of its warmth to the bedroom when a noise from the field outside reached their ears. Inuyasha flinched, curled up more tightly and tried to burrow deeper into the bed.

"It's nothing," Sesshomaru assured him. "It's only the groundsmen and guards keeping this wing safe. The birds are tethered now. I won't allow anyone to hurt you."

Realising now that he himself was soaked from having entered the bath to retrieve Inuyasha, Sesshomaru began to disrobe. So that Inuyasha would not misunderstand his intentions, he chose a thin linen day-robe from the garments folded in one of the cabinets, pulled it on swiftly, and knotted it around his body. He slipped under the blanket, lay beside his brother and asked him: "May I put my arms around you? I won't do more than that. I only wish to warm you better than the covers can."

He carefully lifted one edge of the quilt cover and slid in next to the boy, put his arms about him and drew him close till his head was cradled in the comfortable spot between Sesshomaru's shoulder, chest and upper arm. Inuyasha's entire body stiffened momentarily, but when Sesshomaru only held him, he slowly softened into his embrace.

This was the first occasion on which the demon lord had ever seen his brother in his human form, for in the ten years the child had lived here, his vigilant mother had always kept him inside her own bedroom on every night of the new moon, and Sesshomaru had never had the opportunity to spy on him there.

He was remarkably beautiful even as a human, Sesshomaru thought now, looking down at the translucent skin of his face; his long, dark lashes; delicate mouth and that fine little nose – strong echoes of his mother abounded in his features, and the demon had always acknowledged on an objective level that his human stepmother had been an exquisitely lovely woman, although he had not cared for her, or for how much of his father's love she had enjoyed.

Inuyasha's eyelids kept trying to flutter open, but at last fatigue and the comforting warmth of the bed overcame his desire to stay awake and alert, and he yielded to a restless sleep.

…

He had been so upset with Sesshomaru, and had kept himself shut up in his room with the door and all the windows blocked for long enough to forget that this day would turn into the night of the new moon. Earlier, he had smelt and heard the demon birds landing, and had thought little of it – Sesshomaru was obviously going on with his life as usual without him. In the late afternoon, he had eaten the last biscuit in his secret stash.

Then he had taken a peek out through the slats of his window shutters to see if he could spot the birds, and the sight of the late-afternoon sky had suddenly prompted him to count back the dates to the last new moon. To his horror, he realised that this night would be the night he would become human – and that the birds only one field away were the kind that drank human blood.

In a panic, he had pulled on his fire rat robe. That robe had shielded him from so much injury in countless emergencies, and he naturally felt far more safe and secure with it covering his skin. He also tucked the leaf Bokusen'o had given him into his clothing for some comfort before he immersed his entire body up to his neck in his unheated bath in the hope of hiding his scent from the birds, and from the other demons in the castle. Mama wasn't here any more to give them a valid reason for detecting the hint of a human somewhere about. He would have liked to hold on to his mother's hairpin too for further emotional security, but did not dare risk its metal parts and delicate enamel by steeping it in the bath along with himself.

He had been in there for two hours by the time the sun went down, and his transformation into his full-human state had begun. Almost immediately, he had heard the birds growing agitated in the next field. The water was obviously not doing as good a job of concealing his scent as he had hoped – at least not from those exceptionally sharp-nosed predators which could detect the mortal blood they always hungered for from miles away.

The completion of the transformation left him completely weak, for he had eaten nothing but biscuits in three days, and drunk only his cold bathwater – a breeze for his half-demon body to handle, but not for his human one.

He lost track of time in there. He grew so cold, so unutterably cold, his human body losing heat by the minute to the chilly bathwater. His mind began to drift, and the coldness all around him took him back decades to the long winter nights when he would curl his tiny body against his mother's for warmth under her quilt, and she would soothe him and calm him while the wind howled angrily outside.

"It's only the wind, Inuyasha," she would whisper. "The wind brings all kinds of things with it – not always bad things, but sometimes good things, good changes. Don't be afraid. Make a wish that even though its hands are cold and icy, they will still bear you better times, like a gift."

He would always make a wish that nothing would change, and he would always have his mother there with him. But still the wind brought both good and bad, and one day she was dead, and he was turned out of the house by his human relatives, while he was still too small to look after himself properly. But in the cold nights all alone in the forests, he would tuck tightly into what natural shelter he could find to keep out of the rain and wind, away from things that would try to eat him, and he would dream of his mother, and make a wish that things would change for the better.

It was so, _so_ cold. He wanted to wish that his mother was with him again – but no, she was at peace now; why should he disturb her rest? He thought then that maybe he should wish that he had been born either a human or a demon so that he would have a place to belong – but then again, how could he deny his descent from either one of his parents without rejecting their love for each other and for him? So he decided to make a wish that he would be safe, and loved, and also brave and strong enough to face whatever confronted him in life.

The leaf against his chest grew warm, and he knew that someone, something, somehow, had heard his wish… but gods, aside from that tiny spot of warmth on his chest, it was so awfully cold…

By the time the birds finally lost control and came battering against his shutters, he was chilled to the bone by the cold bathwater, sick with hunger and fear, totally blind in the darkness, and almost delirious. When Sesshomaru touched him, he had not known who he was or what was going on, and he had kicked, bitten and scratched in desperation, believing that one of the birds had broken in at last and was about to drain his blood. But Bokusen'o's leaf had flared against his chest once more with a warming sensation that gave him comfort and courage, and he had heard the tree's voice in his head: _Be calm, little prince, you will be safe._

As he heeded the voice and went limp in the predator's grip, he gradually realised that it was Sesshomaru who was holding him, and carrying him into the bedroom. Then when the demon lord went about removing his clothes and keeping him warm, and as the candlelight flared, Inuyasha's fevered mind realised, bit by little bit, that his brother was trying to help him. However, he felt as if he had been removed from his own body, and was merely looking on from the other side of the room at what was happening, without the power to do anything or to respond to Sesshomaru's prompting.

But as the demon lord slipped into bed with him and put his arms around him, Inuyasha felt himself gliding back into his own body so that he was no longer a detached observer, but feeling Sesshomaru against his skin and inhaling his familiar scent up close. Only then did his mind and spirit decide that he was safe now, and that it was high time he went to sleep.

…

How long he remained in his fitful slumber he did not know. But when he opened his eyes again, the candles on the cabinet had burnt down by a third, and Sesshomaru was still holding him in his arms, looking down at him.

Inuyasha suddenly felt the vast distance between them even as they lay so close together. He was a mere human boy on this night, defenceless, weak and sick, while his half-brother was a great demon lord, powerful almost beyond measure, and so intolerant of the humanity of his father's second wife all those years ago.

He knew how disgusting he must seem to Sesshomaru in this shape, while Sesshomaru appeared, through his human eyes, to be a fearsome predator that could tear him apart without the least difficulty. He tried at once to push himself away from his brother and to sit up.

"What are you doing?" the demon lord asked, holding him back with one powerful arm wrapped around his body.

"Let go of me," Inuyasha said, and as he spoke, he also began to recall why he had been so furious with Sesshomaru before. His anger swelled.

"No," Sesshomaru replied, keeping his arm round him and taking hold of one of his wrists with his other hand. "You are not as yet well enough to move around."

"You can stop being so bloody hypocritical now," Inuyasha snapped, continuing to struggle, although his human strength was nothing to his demon brother's. "This worthless half-breed doesn't need your pretend-care and your fake concern."

Sesshomaru's heart was pierced all over again by the pain that had been intermittently needling it for days as he remembered what he had said to Inuyasha the night before. The demon lord knew, as if a blinding flash of light had shot into his brain and told him so with an accompanying crash of thunder, that this was a pivotal moment. If he did not do the right thing _at once,_ without hesitation, he would lose Inuyasha forever – perhaps not physically, but certainly the half-demon's heart would never be his. And if he did not learn to relate to this brother of his, then never in his life would he develop the ability to connect deeply with a true companion.

The right thing was unbelievably difficult for one so proud to do, but Sesshomaru saw it was crucial that he do it immediately. So he swallowed his pride, every bit of it that threatened to rear up and interfere, and uttered these simple and sincere words: "Inuyasha, I am very sorry for what I said. I allowed my anger to speak for me, when I should have spoken with my heart instead. Will you forgive me?"

Scarcely able to believe what he was hearing, Inuyasha stared at Sesshomaru out of his wide, round, human eyes. In his confusion, he did not know what to say.

When his brother did not answer, Sesshomaru continued: "I did not mean or believe those ugly words I used. I certainly do not think you worthless or undeserving – far from it. But if you will not forgive me, I will understand."

The demon lord was hurt when Inuyasha's only response after that was to mutter: "Let go of me – I'm well enough."

Slowly and reluctantly, he released his hold on the boy, who moved away from him and sat up, clutching the blanket around his naked body and moving his legs over the edge of the bed. But he did not try to get off the bed or stand up, and Sesshomaru knew that he must still be too unwell and weak to do so on his own. He should call for a healer – but how was he to do that without exposing the half-demon's secret?

He pondered his options, only to have his thoughts interrupted by a soft murmur from Inuyasha: "I forgive you for what you said."

 _But not for all my other sins,_ Sesshomaru realised, as he took in his brother's choice of words. He pondered that as he answered aloud: "Thank you for forgiving me."

Inuyasha did not reply. He kept his back to him, giving him glimpses of an alluring plane of skin on display above the blanket whose folds gathered around his hips, pale flesh peeking out from between still-damp locks of black hair. Sesshomaru was drawn to the smooth and soft look of the skin, which appeared to be slightly more delicate than its already highly-touchable texture when it covered his half-demon shape. But he was also concerned enough about his health to move over and drape the blanket's folds over his shoulders, depriving himself of the view.

"You must keep yourself as warm as possible until the sun rises," Sesshomaru told him. "You should be strong enough then to cope with the cold, and, I hope, to fight off all that ails you now. I wish to send for food for you, and a healer, but as no one else here knows about what happens on the night of the new moon, perhaps you can hold on until daybreak?"

Half-turning his head to show Sesshomaru a partial profile of his human face with its rather babyish features, Inuyasha asked softly: "How long have you known about this? About what happens every month?"

"Since you were an infant," the elder brother answered. "I have never told a soul."

"Why am I still alive then? You should have killed me in my bed when I was a child, as you find humans so disgusting."

Again, Sesshomaru found himself poised on the knife-edge of needing to say and do the right thing, and avoid stumbling into an irreparable error that would haunt him forever.

He gathered his thoughts and analysed his feelings before saying to Inuyasha honestly: "I did find humans disgusting when I was younger. I thought them weak, ugly and filthy. Then your mother came into our father's life, and I realised that not all of them were ugly or filthy, or spiritually weak. But I still hated them, because I resented the great love Father had for your mother, which he never had for mine, or showed to me. As I began to rule over the humans in my kingdom, I came – grudgingly at first – to acknowledge and even admire their resourcefulness in making up for their lack of physical strength, and for the tribes they formed, in which individual members largely cooperated and sacrificed themselves for one another, and even loved one another – traits that do not come so naturally to demons. I now ensure that the human communities within my kingdom are treated fairly and protected against hostile action that may originate from demons, or from human bandits. Although I still have no particular interest in my human subjects, it has in truth been a long time since I found them disgusting. And I think _you_ are beautiful in any form you take. Even in the days when I thought I hated you, I never regarded you as anything less than beautiful."

Inuyasha turned his head a little more so that he could look at Sesshomaru, to search his eyes and replay his speech in his head to find any falsehood in it. He did not share with Sesshomaru the conclusion he drew from his assessment of his words and manner, but the light flush that graced his cheeks suggested to the demon lord that what he had said was not entirely unacceptable.

Then Inuyasha turned his head away again and continued sitting there in silence for some time longer.

Eventually, though, he drew his legs back up onto the bed and lay down, and he did not object when his brother lay beside him and rested a hand lightly on his arm to assure him of his presence and protection, until the sun rose from her slumber and showed her face to the world again.


	16. Making Changes

Inuyasha's transformation from his human state to his half-demon form was a fascinating sight to behold. All demons and most half-demons have at least a touch of magic to them, which is why they can easily handle magical spells and often assume different forms. Inuyasha's regular half-demon-to-human-and-back metamorphosis certainly was magical in nature, and what was more than magical was how the process of this physical alteration was rendered most watchable because of his striking beauty in both forms.

His midnight-black hair filled out and lengthened, and what first looked like streaks and glimmers of silver among the strands swiftly took over the whole of his head until his usual gleaming white mane was complete.

His gray eyes with the jewel-like violet flecks in them turned golden in a blink, and his little human ears shrank away to nothing while the triangular dog ears made their reappearance atop his head. His fangs and claws grew back out too, and his muscles became a little bigger and more defined.

Sesshomaru watched attentively and asked, once it was complete: "Does it hurt when it happens, either way?"

Inuyasha shot Sesshomaru a look, as if to say that he would much rather not hold a conversation about such a secret aspect of his existence, at least not with him. But the demon lord met his look and continued to wait for his response, so he mumbled almost inaudibly: "I'm used to it. It's no longer as uncomfortable as it seemed when I was a child."

"How are you feeling now?" Sesshomaru asked.

"Better."

"I shall send for a healer at once," he said, against his heart's desire to remain ensconced in the room with Inuyasha, and shut the world out. "You should be looked over to ensure that all is well with you."

"I don't like any of the healers that used to work here when I was a child," Inuyasha stated bluntly.

"Did any of them harm you?" Sesshomaru asked, in an alert-enough voice to give Inuyasha instant visions of the castle's medical personnel melting away in a toxic heap of venom from his brother's poison claws.

"No!" he said quickly. "No – they never tried to harm me or my mother – but they never stopped their children from bullying me either, even when they could see them hurting me, and that told me more than I needed to know about what they actually thought of me."

"We have newer healers," Sesshomaru assured him. "Ones who began working here after you left, and whom you have never met before. Before you returned to the castle, I personally selected a few excellently trained healers who were accustomed to working with humans and half-demons, as well as with full demons."

"I'm fine. Forget it."

"I want you to be well and safe – even if I have to make you angry by disregarding what you say right now. Please allow me to do that."

Without waiting for more arguments, Sesshomaru went to the door, unlatched it, and called for the servant on duty at the end of the corridor.

"Fetch the wolf-demon healer," he told him, as he racked his brains for the name. Coming up with it at last, he added: "The one called Satoshi."

"Yes, my lord," the servant replied, running off at once to carry out the order.

Sesshomaru saw that his personal attendants were waiting in the corridor, along with Natsumi. He told two of his attendants to leave, for he did not require their services this morning. The third, Isshin, was given instructions to convey to the kitchen regarding the kind of food he wanted sent up to the prince's bedroom as soon as it could be ready. Natsumi was waved into the room, where she quickly and quietly helped Inuyasha to dress in some light robes – nothing thick or elaborate, for she had heard Sesshomaru say that the healer was expected, and he could have been summoned only for the prince. At the same time, Sesshomaru borrowed a thicker outer garment from Inuyasha's wardrobe and pulled it on himself, over the thinner robe.

As Natsumi finished tying a simple knot for Inuyasha on the lightly patterned outer robe she had selected, the sound of hurrying feet and the strong odour of dried herbs in the air announced the arrival of the healer. The wolf demon stepped into the room, bowed low before Sesshomaru and Inuyasha, and asked what he could do for his lord and his prince.

Inuyasha saw that he was a sensible-looking individual with dark-brown hair and bright lilac eyes, slightly untidily dressed in a rough brown robe, but with a calm and steady air about him. It was hard to tell if he was old or young. Demons have a habit of looking much the same for many hundreds of years, and this demon's face and eyes gave away nothing about his age.

"I wish you to examine my brother and ensure that he is well," Sesshomaru told the healer.

"Yes, my lord," the wolf demon replied before turning to the prince. "Your Highness, would you permit me to examine you while you sit on your bed? It will be easier for us both if you are seated."

"I told you I was fine," Inuyasha protested to Sesshomaru, as he stopped Natsumi from removing Bokusen'o's leaf along with the wet clothing Sesshomaru had stripped off him and dropped on the floor last night.

But the healer bowed again to draw Inuyasha's attention back to himself, and asked him: "Your Highness, may I ask what it was that may have ailed you earlier, even if you feel better now?"

"It was nothing," Inuyasha grumbled, fingering the leaf as Natsumi withdrew discreetly to take his and Sesshomaru's wet clothing, and all the damp towels, to the laundry room.

"One can never tell if an ailment is nothing or not, until it either develops or is nipped in the bud," Satoshi pressed on mildly, but insistently.

"I just didn't eat much for a few days, that's all," Inuyasha muttered, feeling that the leaf was giving him a sense of calm. "And I got kind of badly chilled last night, but I'm warm now. Nothing to it."

"Nonetheless, if Your Highness would be kind enough to humour me, I would like to look at your tongue and your eyelids, check your pulse, feel the temperature of your forehead, and assess your breathing. If you find the thought of all that annoying, perhaps you might choose to express your feelings by sticking out your tongue at me to begin with? That would help us both!"

Sesshomaru raised one eyebrow fractionally, not certain if he approved of this light-hearted tone the healer was taking. However, it appeared to be working on Inuyasha, who promptly stuck his tongue out in a manner that was probably intended to be rude.

"Ah!" Satoshi exclaimed, leaning towards the prince for a closer look at the pink bit of flesh he was now presented with. "A healthy colour, and a clean surface."

"That _does_ make me feel better, actually," Inuyasha said when he pulled his tongue back into his mouth, a hint of cheekiness coming back into his voice.

"Excellent, Your Highness," the healer remarked. "Would you object very much to sitting on your bed while I check your eyelids and temperature?"

This healer was not at all threatening or unfriendly, and Inuyasha found it easy to relax in his presence. So he shrugged and climbed onto his bed, on which he sat cross-legged by the edge of the mattress. He placed the leaf on his side table while Satoshi stood before him and gently pulled his lower eyelids down and his upper eyelids up, then felt his forehead, neck and jawline.

"How old are you, Your Highness?"

"Two hundred."

"Hmm," the healer murmured as he finished the second part of his examination. "No unusual temperature or colouring, no inflammation or swelling… all seems well so far. Would you please lie down on your back, Your Highness, so that I can check your pulse?"

As Inuyasha flopped onto his back, Sesshomaru experienced a twinge of jealousy to see how easy the boy could be around others once they proved harmless, but so unnaturally stiff with him when they were alone.

Satoshi drew up a footstool and planted himself on it after making a bow to Sesshomaru for permission to take a seat in his lord's presence, borrowed one of the smaller pillows decorating the base of the bed's headboard, and rested Inuyasha's right wrist on it. He pressed his fingers lightly over the half-demon's inner wrist and felt the strength and speed of his pulse.

After two minutes, the healer said: "You may sit up now if you wish, Your Highness." The wolf demon rose from the footstool and bowed again to Sesshomaru to thank him for permitting him to be seated. Then he told both the king and prince: "His Highness' health seems to be normal, except that his pulse appears to be _regaining_ its pace and strength, for some reason I cannot yet determine. It started out strong enough, with only a slightly weak third beat, but even that slowness diminished as I continued feeling the pulse. So it appears that His Highness suffered some recent trauma, but is recovering well from it."

"What do you prescribe?" Sesshomaru asked, just as Natsumi returned to the room.

"Nothing more than strengthening herbs for now, nourishing food, and proper sleep. It would be good for His Highness to rest quietly for today, but it will probably do no harm if he chooses to resume his normal routine, as his pulse and spirit energy are remarkably strong for a half-demon of his youth. I shall write out the prescription and prepare the herbs at once. Should I deliver them when they are ready, or would Your Majesty prefer to send someone to collect them from me?"

"Natsumi will collect them from you later," Sesshomaru decided.

Satoshi bowed and took his leave, stepping out of the room at nearly the same time as the food Sesshomaru had ordered from the kitchen arrived, brought up on a tray personally by the attendant, Isshin, who had not thought it a good idea to have the kitchen staff tripping all over the prince's bedroom while it was in such a disorganised state.

"You may have breakfast in your room today, so that you can get more rest," the demon lord told his brother. "You are also to have your lessons here. I will send Jaken up and remind him to keep the lesson short this morning."

"I told you I was fine!" Inuyasha sighed, as the attendant rested the food on the writing desk before locating a more suitable table for it from amongst the mess of furniture all over the floor.

But he did like the thought of resting in his room, which was looking much better after the chaotic state it had been in for days, now that a couple of the housekeeping servants had been admitted at last and were starting to bustle around picking up the fallen furniture, removing the broken items, putting the intact cabinets and cupboards back in the spots Natsumi indicated, and opening the windows. And the food did smell good. Also, Jaken had never seen his room, so it would be nice to show his kappa tutor what it looked like.

Sesshomaru took his silence as consent.

"I must see our visitors off, but I shall be back once they have left, and when your lessons are over," the demon lord said to his brother.

Beckoning to Isshin, Sesshomaru left for his own room to change his attire, leaving Inuyasha to his breakfast and to Natsumi's safe hands.

…

"Your Highness must never do anything like that again!" Jaken squawked, the second he had ascertained that the prince was perfectly well. "I was worried about you, but the guards wouldn't let me see you! And no one could tell me much!"

"Nothing's wrong now," Inuyasha grumbled. "So Sesshomaru and I had a fight and I shut myself up in my room. Big deal."

"But those horrible birds!" Jaken protested. "How dare they batter against Your Highness' windows? It was unacceptable!"

"No harm done," Inuyasha brushed it off, far more breezily than he ought to have, considering how vulnerable he had been last night. "So what are you going to teach me in the hour that we have today? A recipe for demon-bird stew?"

"While that _would_ be fitting, considering that those birds had the audacity to attempt an attack on you, Your Highness would perhaps do better with learning some spells that enable us to conceal our scent from others – an important survival skill for times when one prefers not to fight but would rather lie low."

"You know such spells?"

"One or two. These things are best taught by a specialist in such matters, but for now, I suppose I can give you an idea of how one of these basic spells may be done."

"Go on," Inuyasha prompted him impatiently.

"It isn't as simple as someone gathering all the right ingredients, boiling them into some magic potion while chanting over them and handing bottles of it out to anyone, you know," Jaken explained. "To conceal your scent, you have to work out with help from one skilled in magical spells what your own body chemistry is like. After that, you can prepare suitable ingredients that will with the right touch of magic neutralise those scents. Mind you, a general spell will work fairly well for most demons – and half-demons, of course – but there's nothing like one tailored to you as an individual."

"Okay, but until we can get our hands on some magical specialist, what sort of general spell would work on a half-demon like me?"

"Well, I believe the kinds of scents that mark dog demons as what they are may be neutralised by an appropriate combination of these herbs…" Jaken's voice trailed off as he wrote down a list of mysterious plant names. "They should be boiled and condensed, and when cool, can be slathered onto one's skin or sprinkled over, with an incantation to make them continue adhering to your skin even if you should be caught in a heavy downpour or are forced to burrow underground. That's the most basic recipe. However, I should add that something so simple won't fool the most discerning demons, like Lord Sesshomaru. And it can only mask your scent while it lasts – it won't conceal your demon energy from other demons. Concealing _that_ requires other kinds of physical and spiritual training. The scent-masking basics, however, will be enough to avoid unpleasant or unnecessary attention from lower-level demons or simple-minded predators."

"Which someone as small as you would really need, right? Otherwise you'd have been turned into a snack years ago!" Inuyasha teased.

"Enough about my size, Your Highness," Jaken exhaled a quavery sigh.

"So who would be an expert in magic spells that we can ask for more information?" Inuyasha questioned his tutor, for he was at this time more interested in learning if he could disguise his human scent.

"A few of the healers working in this castle have a lot of experience with spells, as they are often required to treat individuals who have been cursed or otherwise badly affected by magic that has been used against them," Jaken said. "I shall ask Lord Sesshomaru if we may engage them for a few lessons. The most magically powerful demoness I ever encountered, however, was Lord Sesshomaru's mother. I met her once, on her last visit, and she was impressive indeed. But we can hardly ask to be trained by her!"

Inuyasha had never met Sesshomaru's mother. She had not come to the castle in the ten years he had lived here as a child, and she did not seem close to her son. The half-demon prince, who had known nothing but love and affection from his own Mama, wondered why Sesshomaru's mother was willing to remain so distant from her offspring, and if all the coldness he saw in Sesshomaru came purely from her.

For the first time in his life, Inuyasha felt a little bit sorry for his older brother. However, that feeling did not last long.

After his brief lesson in the morning, Jaken left, and Inuyasha had a couple of hours to himself before Sesshomaru returned to the room, having seen off Tsubasa and her group of delegates after a good breakfast with them. The bird-demon ambassador had left in her usual sprightly manner, tinged with regret that the unaccountably bad behaviour of her beasts had made it impossible for her to lure Sesshomaru back into her bed for a few more hours of amusement.

Inuyasha neither knew nor cared about any of that. He only knew that while he had agreed to forgive Sesshomaru for his unkind words from the night before last, he had not as yet begun to forgive him for manipulating him so easily in the bedroom and for keeping him here, bound both by threats and by the disturbing allure of being cared for by an older brother after a lifetime of being treated as if he were nothing but dirt to him.

So when Sesshomaru sat across from him at a small but finely made table that the servants had carried in to place their lunch dishes on, Inuyasha had his blank face on again as he wondered how long the demon lord would be nice to him purely because of the bird incident, and when he would start trying all kinds of unmentionable things on him again in one bed or the other.

"Inuyasha, are you feeling unwell?" Sesshomaru asked, concerned.

"No."

"You look less bright-eyed than you did this morning. I should send for the healer again."

"No. I'm fine."

"What is wrong?"

"Nothing."

Sesshomaru was getting nowhere with this exchange, so he sat back in his chair and looked across at his brother, who was staring at an invisible point somewhere between his own lap and the edge of the table. He thought about all the ways in which he had erred with this young creature, and that what he wanted most was to have him in his life always. He had known from the start that his simple apology last night hardly sufficed for all that they had been through, and now was the time to do the rest. He thus decided to swallow more of the bitter pill he had already started taking in.

"Inuyasha," the demon lord said. "I know I have much more to apologise for."

Inuyasha still stared at the invisible point.

Sesshomaru continued: "I'm sorry for all that I have done to you that you may not have wanted me to. I want you here with me because you are my brother and I am learning to care for you and about you. But I realise that the way I have gone about keeping you here is far from acceptable to you. I never took the time to find out what you want and who you really are. It's time to change that. I want to know you as you truly are, not the passive being you pretend to be when I am causing you pain or being insensitive to your feelings."

Inuyasha had gradually raised his eyes as Sesshomaru began this new part of his apology, and by the time he was done, the half-demon was staring at him with the same brand of disbelief that had taken over his face when Sesshomaru had told him four days ago that he could sleep alone in his own room.

"You want to know me as I truly am?" he repeated after the demon.

"Yes. I want to know who you really are, what you are truly like, what you are thinking and feeling. I want to hear what is on your mind – what you think of me – even if it is unflattering or may be unwelcome to my ears."

"You want to hear what I'm thinking?" Inuyasha asked his next question, incredulously. "Why? So you can whip all the skin off my back just because I've been rude? Or set fire to my friends in the village for my honest thoughts?"

"I believe I am capable of distinguishing between times when my younger brother is simply offering me frank speech – even though it may sound offensive to me – and times when he is deliberately trying to be provocative and disrespectful," Sesshomaru said. "At those times when you are purposely provoking me, I can assure you that your backside will sting from the spanking I would only be too pleased to give you. But if you are merely speaking frankly, I will accept all you have to say."

"Really?" Inuyasha said, getting to his feet. "I can tell you _exactly_ what I think of you? Without being flayed for it or getting my friends killed?"

"Is this is really something you need to stand up for?" Sesshomaru asked, not without a touch of resignation as he braced himself for the onslaught he knew was coming.

"Yes," Inuyasha stated, his eyes glowing a deep gold and his fangs showing as he leaned over the table towards the seated Sesshomaru. "I need to stand up to do this because if I do it sitting down I might just THROW MY BACK OUT GIVING YOU A PIECE OF MY MIND!"

It crossed Sesshomaru's mind that if Inuyasha had yelled any louder into his face, his fringe might have blown clear off his forehead.

"I think you're a sick, twisted _pervert_ who has no idea how to interact normally with anyone without sticking your _cock_ – or some substitute for it – into one part of their bodies or another!" Inuyasha began. "You screw anything and everything at the drop of a hat, which is a fucking _crappy_ way for a king to behave – don't think I couldn't smell that bird-demon female all over you the moment I got my usual senses back this morning. You treat people like _filth_ , worse than worms, when you think they've offended you, and you have no respect for others' dignity or feelings. You treated my mother and me like we were nothing to you – _nothing!_ – and then you come around two hundred years later _threatening_ my friends and _molesting_ me and thinking that I can't see right through you for the sex-crazed hypocrite you are. You don't care about me but you pretend to just so that you can keep me quiet and save yourself some trouble when you order me into your bed – and just because you make my body react in all kinds of disgusting ways it doesn't mean that I actually like anything you do to me. To get me here, you even said you would burn the village I lived in, and you called the villagers 'pathetic' – what kind of king does that to a community in his _own_ kingdom? And you really think that giving me nice food and clothes and stuff and saying sorry to me once or twice can make up for all the _shit_ you've done before this? If you think that, then you're even sicker than I thought you were to begin with!"

The prince seemed to want to say more, but by then, he was starting to get red in the face from expressing his pent-up feelings so vociferously, and from expressing them to and about the great Lord Sesshomaru, of all people. He shut his mouth, then opened it once with a sharp intake of breath, but let out a frustrated huff instead of continuing with his rant, and closed his mouth again before sitting down with his arms folded across his chest and his eyes boring furiously into Sesshomaru's like twin blazing suns.

Sesshomaru burned to ask: _Did you not like anything at all that I did to you?_ But having the sense to know that that would be an exceedingly unwise question at this stage, what he actually asked was: "Is that all you wish to say to me?"

"Probably not, but it will do for now," Inuyasha said angrily.

Sesshomaru could hardly believe that he had invited this upon himself, but if it would begin to repair things somehow with his brother, and if somewhere along the way it might begin to heal his own soul, this and more would be worth bearing with.

"I accept the fairness of all that you have said to me, except the part about my not caring about you," he spoke, slowly, as he tried to find the words that would truthfully and accurately describe his thoughts and feelings. "I want you to know that _because_ I care about you, I will do what I can – in my private life – to behave in a manner that will be more acceptable to you. I cannot make you any promises about how I see fit to govern my kingdom or my subjects – including insolent creatures like Morio's son – for such things are determined by more than one's private character and beliefs. But I _do_ apologise for threatening and insulting your friends. Though I cannot promise that I will change overnight or in every area that you find fault with, I give you my word that I will try. I value your presence in my life – I did not expect when I first brought you home that you would be much more to me than a younger brother to amuse me by night – but you have in a few short days become important to me, and I wish to be to you what I ought to have been all these years. I hope you will give me the chance to make up to you all the ways in which I failed you before."

Inuyasha was still suspicious of Sesshomaru, and did not believe that he would change much, or at all. However, he was a tender-hearted young prince, and he could not find it within himself to throw his brother's surprising humility, and those words that sounded so sincere, back in his face. He pondered what Sesshomaru had said, then found the words to sum up his present feelings about it all: "And I hope you don't mind if I say that I'll believe it when I see it."

"That is fair enough," Sesshomaru conceded. "I would not expect you to just take my word for it. That you would be willing to give me time to be a better brother to you is enough for me at this point."

Inuyasha remained silent, gazing at him contemplatively.

At last Sesshomaru moved to pick up a serving spoon and scoop up some braised meat from one of the dishes before them. He leaned across the table to put it onto Inuyasha's plate.

"Please eat before the food goes completely cold," he said. "After what happened last night, you shouldn't consume cold food."

Inuyasha looked at him, then at the food, and after what felt like an interminable pause, picked up his cutlery and started eating.


	17. Communication

"Would you like to write to your friends?" Sesshomaru asked Inuyasha, after the lunch dishes had been cleared away from the prince's bedroom.

"You would let me do that?" Inuyasha asked suspiciously.

"Yes, I would. And I would have your letter delivered to them at once. I would be happy to have any letters you write, at any time, sent to them promptly."

The demon lord was pleased to see his brother's face light up, all the dark clouds of his earlier enumeration of Sesshomaru's shortcomings blown away in a second.

"I can really write to them any time I want?" Inuyasha asked, more eagerly, in such a childlike manner that Sesshomaru's nascent conscience was pricked to think of how he had only been the latest in a long line of tormentors who had forced the boy to grow up faster than he ought to have.

"Of course," he answered.

Inuyasha had seen the writing paper in his desk drawer before, but thought it was there just for show – he had not believed that Sesshomaru would permit him to contact anyone outside the castle. He went at once to the desk, took out the paper and an ink stick, and quickly ground some of the ink into the well of the inkstone on his desk – the same one he had flung at Sesshomaru's head a few days ago. It was not broken, fortunately, for it was a beautiful item whose main decorative element was a carved figure of a dog in full flight. He wet the compacted, powdery grains with some drinking water, and worked the solution with the grinding stone until it was a smooth liquid film.

As Sesshomaru drew up a chair beside him, Inuyasha looked through the writing paper available, each sheet hand-painted in a different shade of watery, discreet colour. He selected a fine piece with lavender hues and scrutinised the range of brushes of different sizes that reclined against the notched wooden stand beside the inkstone.

He chose one with a medium-sized head and dipped its pointed end into the ink, then wrote two names on the top right corner of the sheet of paper.

"Are those the priestess sisters?" the demon lord asked.

"Yes – Kikyo and Kaede," Inuyasha replied, slightly absently, for he was focusing on making his writing look nice. "Kikyo's the older sister… but of course they're both old now."

He fell silent as he began to concentrate on what he wanted to say in the letter. Sesshomaru was sitting rather close to him, but he did not attempt to make physical contact, and Inuyasha sensed that the demon lord was merely interested in seeing his writing style.

His brother's presence was surprisingly not much of a hindrance to his crafting of his letter, for Inuyasha most wished to tell his friends that he was alive and as well as he could be, and to ask them how they were. Even if he had not been sitting right there beside him, he would not have wished to say anything about his initial treatment at his hands, for that would only have made the sisters sad. He simply wrote that he was safe and in good health, had been given a big room of his own, had lessons with a tutor almost every morning and was learning all sorts of interesting things. He asked them how they had been these past days, and whether the village was safe from bandit raids and attacks by human-eating demons.

When he got to that point, he looked up and asked Sesshomaru: "Can they write back to me?"

"Certainly. The messenger will wait for their reply, even if he has to wait overnight."

So Inuyasha continued by asking them to reply, for he was looking forward to hearing from them. He finished his letter with more wishes and hopes that they were keeping well.

He had gone a little too heavy on the ink towards the end when he re-dipped his brush in the well, and had to blow on the sheet to make the writing dry more quickly. When the ink no longer gleamed wetly, he folded up the letter and secured it in an outer sheet of protective paper that he tucked in on itself so that it fully enclosed the thinner writing paper. To keep the whole piece intact, he bound it with some decorative string.

Sesshomaru called for one of his more trusted personal messengers, a red-haired dog demon named Yuno, and directed him to ensure that the letter was delivered into the hands of one of the two priestesses of the village with the great tree that the humans thought sacred to the gods, near the eastern coast. He was told to take one of the stronger dragons who could easily cover the distance in three hours, and to wait overnight near the village if the priestesses needed more time to write their reply.

"Yes, my lord," Yuno replied promptly. Before long, Inuyasha saw him and the dragon taking off from the castle grounds and disappearing into the distance. He longed to go with them, but it was miraculous enough that Sesshomaru was allowing him to write to his friends – the opportunity was so precious that he didn't dare push his luck by asking if he could visit them as well.

Natsumi knocked on the door then, and was admitted, carrying a few packages of herbs that the healer Satoshi had measured out and mixed for Inuyasha. Each dose was to be gently double-boiled with two soup bowls' worth of pure water till it was reduced to one bowl, she reported, and His Highness was to take one dose a day before going to bed at night, for three nights.

Sesshomaru examined the herbs, and determined from their scent that they could not possibly contain anything that might harm Inuyasha. He told Natsumi: "Leave the medication here where it will be safe. Come back each evening to collect a dose, and oversee the preparation of the medication yourself. Have someone reliable watch over it at all times. Do not allow the kitchen staff to mix it up with anything else by mistake."

The racoon demon received her orders with a bow and a reply that she would take the utmost care with the medication, before putting the herbs away in a cabinet and withdrawing.

Alone with Inuyasha again, Sesshomaru asked: "Do you think you will feel like having dinner in the dining hall this evening? Or would you prefer to eat in your room?"

His spirits raised by seeing his letter to his friends so speedily sent off, Inuyasha opted to eat in the dining hall.

Sesshomaru nodded and said he had some work to do, but that he would see Inuyasha at dinner time. After reminding him not to over-exert himself today even if he felt perfectly well, the demon lord left his brother's room.

He had not attempted to touch Inuyasha even once since the sun had risen on this new day.

…

Not at all heeding Sesshomaru's advice to take things easy, Inuyasha sprinted out of the castle into the gardens in a streak of silver hair and dark green-and-gold silk, and from there across the fields to the patch of forest where he greeted Bokusen'o with a cheerful: "Hey there, I'm back!"

He leaped into the branches and said to the tree: "You were telling me through the leaf you gave me that I would be all right! Thanks, Bokusen'o!"

As the half-demon prince sat high up amongst the leaves with his back against the trunk, one hand reaching back to pat the bark, he could hear the tree say in words that seemed to drift silently through unseen spaces and enter his head directly: _If your brother does not learn to treasure you from now on, I shall lift my roots out of the ground and walk to the castle to give him a hiding like he has never had._

Inuyasha chuckled, trying not to laugh too loudly at the image of a great and angry demon-tree uprooting itself and spanking Sesshomaru with its unyielding branches.

He took a nap there through most of the afternoon before exploring the rest of the forest patch, discovering rabbits and pheasants and a decent-sized stream that wound its lengthy way through the grounds, fed by a spring that he remembered had its well-guarded source on the far end of the castle grounds. The stream was cool enough by the time it reached this part of the forest patch to be alive with hardy little fish that had swum upstream from some other pool or river out in the forest, and which sparkled like jewels as they flashed and darted back and forth in the tepid running water. Part of the stream was diverted by a dip in the terrain into a small pool in which tadpoles thrived, and over which a scattering of shimmering dragonflies hovered, giving Inuyasha a fascinating little slice of nature to observe in safety and peace.

Once the sun began to sink behind the distant treetops, he began to turn his thoughts to his letter and his friends, wondering if Yuno had reached the village yet. It would soon be dinner time, so he ran back to his room to find that the servants had thoroughly drained his bath of the old water which had sat in it unchanged for days while he had barricaded himself in, and had refilled it with fresh water which was just turning invitingly hot. Natsumi had everything ready and had set out his evening clothes too. She had even brought back his fire rat robe, all dry and clean now, folded neatly.

"I've already put your first dose of medication to boil in the kitchen where the meals for Lord Sesshomaru and Your Highness are prepared," she reported to him. "My most trusted friend Kazuki is keeping a very sharp eye on it to make sure that it doesn't over-boil, and that no one else touches it. Once we've got you dressed, I will go back down to the kitchen and take over from him."

"What about your own dinner? I can't have you going hungry just because Sesshomaru told you to supervise that medicine stuff."

"Fear not, Your Highness," she said with a bright smile. "Kazuki always feeds me very, very well whenever I'm anywhere near the kitchens!"

"Oh…" Inuyasha said, a playful note creeping into his voice. "A very _special_ friend…?"

He could have sworn that Natsumi blushed a little, but before he could stare harder at her to see if her cheeks were really changing colour, she ushered him into the bathroom with her hands firmly on his back, and by the time he was done with his bath and was ready to be dressed, she looked as cool and calm again as she normally did.

She did, however, ask him in an echo of his own probing as she was doing his hair: "So, does Your Highness have anyone _special_ in his life outside this castle?"

"Me? Huh – not likely. Most humans and demons don't want anything to do with half-demons. And the few that are friendly aren't really suitable for… you know… romantic liaisons."

"Perhaps Your Highness has been in towns and villages where many of the people are wary of half-demons, but I hear that things are changing across our kingdom and even in other lands. There are more and more half-demons these days, and because of that, more people are able to accept those who are a little different from themselves. I even hear that the only child of the present bat-demon leader is a very powerful half-demon girl, and if the succession passes to her, she will be the first ruler of their tribe who is not a full demon."

Inuyasha thought about what she had just said, then admitted: "When I was younger, I was just a little bit in love with one of the priestesses in the village I lived in before coming here. She was so pretty, and so powerful, and very kind-hearted. I think she was a little bit in love with me too. She didn't seem to care that I was a half-demon – she saw me for me, for the person I was inside. But we just stayed friends, because it was really better that way – she's a priestess – she wasn't supposed to ever marry or sleep with any males, otherwise she might have lost her powers. Besides, I guess she knew she would grow really old even before I fully matured. She _is_ really old now. She and her sister are still my closest friends. But it's sad for me when I see how old they've grown. I don't know how much longer they will have to live. Whenever I look at them, I think of my mother growing older and older, hanging on to life as long as she could for my sake, until one day her body couldn't keep up with the strength of her spirit any more, and she was gone."

"Maybe part of the reason why there were so few half-demons in our world all this time was that it would be too sad for demons to see their human mates fading away before their eyes, and for the humans to grow older and weaker even as their children seemed to stay small forever," Natsumi said thoughtfully, moved by his affection for his mother and the priestesses, which she could hear clearly in his voice. "But over the centuries, demons seem to have come to terms with these facts of life, and are more willing to take human mates. Perhaps they have seen how strong and capable half-demons are, not weak or poorly formed as the people of old used to think those of mixed origin would be."

"That may be so," Inuyasha mused. "But for now, it looks like my only realistic 'romantic' option is my own brother. That's pathetic." He wrinkled up his nose.

"Your Highness, that is hardly pathetic," Natsumi replied sensibly. "It is not unusual among demons for siblings to be mated pairs, or lovers."

"I've lived among humans too long," he muttered.

By then, his hair was done, and he was properly attired for the evening in a deep-green robe, so Natsumi went back to the kitchen to make sure the herbal concoction was coming along fine, while Inuyasha headed for the dining hall.

Having just been talking about Sesshomaru with Natsumi, Inuyasha flushed a little as he entered the dining hall to see his demon brother looking as regal and cool as ever at the head of the table. Sesshomaru had already partaken of two meals on this one eventful day, and looked like he was about to start on his third – an uncommon occurrence, for the demon lord routinely went without meals for days. Inuyasha could only guess that he was doing this to keep him company, and a part of him was moved to understand that Sesshomaru was just trying to spend what he thought of as normal family time with him.

All the food on the table was particularly wholesome and nourishing tonight. Lean slivers of the finest marbled raw beef dipped in the kind of rice wine that was often used by humans as a tonic; herbal chicken soup; delicately stewed vegetables that retained all their fresh flavour and colour; and another kind of chicken soup reduced till it was so concentrated that it was a deep brown shade, meant to be drunk in very small quantities.

"I'm not _dying_ , you know," Inuyasha remarked as he stared at all the good stuff laid out on the table. "It's not like I need my strength boosted any more."

"You've only just emerged from an ordeal," Sesshomaru said quietly but firmly. "Eat up and drink up."

Inuyasha grumbled to himself, but it was surprisingly pleasant to feel cared for, and Sesshomaru still wasn't pawing his hair or groping his thigh or anything like that, so this was turning out to be a pretty pleasant day after all. He supposed that he ought to take what he could get while things were still good.

He wolfed down a good deal of the beef, drank a small bowl of the brown soup, a bigger bowl of the herbal soup, and had to be prompted to eat more vegetables to balance his diet. When he felt like bursting, the evening got even better.

Yuno returned with a reply from the village.

Inuyasha's eyes grew enormous as the messenger bowed and held up a rolled sheet of writing paper in his hands. He took the scroll from him, thanked him, and hastily unrolled it. His lips curved into a smile and his eyes shone as he recognised Kikyo's handwriting at once, while a quick glance towards the bottom of the sheet also revealed a few lines penned in Kaede's marginally less refined hand.

"Can I go upstairs to read this now?" Inuyasha asked Sesshomaru.

"Go on," the demon lord said indulgently.

Inuyasha raced up the stairs, jumped onto his bed and sprawled belly-down on the mattress to read the letter.

Kikyo wrote in her usual gentle, restrained style to say that she and all his other friends were relieved to learn that he was in good health and that his brother was treating him so well. She assured him that she and her sister, as well as the other villagers he was close to, were doing very well, and the security of the village was as good as it could be. The farmer's wife who was always giving Inuyasha shiitake mushrooms had just delivered her fourth son, reported Kikyo, and the woman's spirits were lifted after a painful labour to hear that her half-demon friend was unharmed. The ancient tree seemed to be growing a fresh crop of green, young leaves, and had waved a branch at her although there was no breeze then when she hurried out of the hut to read out Inuyasha's letter to it.

Inuyasha laughed to hear that, and reminded himself to tell Bokusen'o about that part of Kikyo's letter.

The lines that Kaede added at the end had to do with how Kikyo had almost purified the messenger Yuno with one of her sacred arrows, thinking him a crony of Sesshomaru's who had come to harm the village, and had held back only when he yelled out that he came in peace! Kaede concluded with a remark that Yuno had fortunately been mollified with a good meal of fresh venison that one of the village hunters had just given them that afternoon.

Inuyasha was chuckling over that when Sesshomaru knocked and entered, and asked what amused him so.

"Can we give Yuno some reward for his troubles?" Inuyasha asked his brother. "Kikyo almost shot him with one of her deadly arrows!"

"Yuno is not unskilled in warfare," Sesshomaru replied. "I'm sure he was more than capable of dodging an old woman's arrows."

"You don't know Kikyo," Inuyasha commented.

"I have already sent him a decent amount of silver for doing his job so well," Sesshomaru assured him. "I said it was from both of us."

"Oh. But I don't have any money," Inuyasha looked worried.

"Yes, you do. I would have told you a few days ago, if we had not quarrelled, that you will receive an allowance every month from now on. You may use it as you see fit."

"But I don't _do_ anything around here," he said awkwardly, wondering with a secret internal cringe if those first few nights of sleeping with Sesshomaru were considered _doing_ something. "I can't take money for nothing."

"Under the laws that our grandfather and father established for this kingdom, every prince or princess of our bloodline is entitled to an allowance from the part of the coffers set aside for the castle's expenses. I am only sorry that you did not have it before, when you lived away from here, but all that is owed to you is there, intact, and you may draw on it through me or through the castle's treasurers, whenever you choose. So you have the money for your own use, regardless of whether you do anything. If you want to earn the money, and perhaps more in future, the best thing you can do now is to study hard, and learn all you can by observing how things are done, so that you will be able to act wisely and take more responsibility for various matters as you mature. I will invite you to some of the meetings I hold with my ministers regularly, and you can learn more from there."

"Meetings…?" Inuyasha said doubtfully. "That sounds boring."

"Perhaps you can liven them up?" Sesshomaru suggested archly.

"We'll see."

"I trust that your friends are well?"

"Yes, everything's fine. There's a new baby in the village, and the sisters are well, and the tree waved at my letter."

Sesshomaru was charmed by the affection he could hear in Inuyasha's voice for the ones he cared about, and desired to hear that liveliness always.

Inuyasha, however, did not know that. He suddenly held his breath after gushing at Sesshomaru, feeling very juvenile and silly for going on about things that the demon lord surely wouldn't care a whit about, and hoping with all his heart that his brother wouldn't ruin everything now by ordering him to his bedroom for more nocturnal amusements.

But all Sesshomaru did was to say softly: "That's good to know. Rest well tonight. I will show you Father's swords tomorrow. I have cleared my work and assigned more of it to my ministers, which I probably should have done long ago, anyway, so I'll have more time to spend with you – if you don't mind."

He turned to go, only to be stopped by the sound of his name: "Sesshomaru?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

The demon lord nodded in acknowledgement of those precious words of appreciation, which he perhaps felt that he did not quite deserve yet.

As Natsumi knocked and entered with Inuyasha's medicine, Sesshomaru quietly left his brother's bedroom and returned alone to his chamber.


	18. Two Together

As the sun began to peep over the horizon the next morning, Sesshomaru met Inuyasha outside his bedroom and led him along the length of the royal wing, right up to its very end.

Inuyasha had lived in this wing for the first ten years of his life, and had spent the past nine days and nights in residence here. Yet, for various reasons, he had never taken those seemingly impossible steps towards the furthest end of the passageway. It felt now like an unknown world he had literally never set foot in, a mysterious new place to explore in this enormous castle.

Sesshomaru opened a heavily carved door, the last door in that wing, and the only one which looked down along the entire length of the corridor. Inuyasha had always known that this was the entrance to his father's room, but in his childhood, the guards had never let him approach this end of the passageway.

Since his return to the castle, although he knew that no one would have stopped him, he had felt reluctant to do what he had never been able to do before – put his hand on the knob and push the door open, as if some of the old emotional shackles that had bound him then continued to mark him. In fact, he had not opened the door of his mother's old room either, believing that the memories he would find there would overwhelm him.

"This was Father's room," said the demon lord, revealing to his brother a large space of robust yet tasteful teak-wood furniture and bold porcelain and metal art, bigger than Sesshomaru's bedroom, but not nearly as elegant or careful in its style and décor. Sesshomaru threw open the shutters to let in the morning light, but the air remained still and silent in the way that air is in rooms which no one lives in any more.

"Why didn't you move in after he died?" Inuyasha asked.

"I was too accustomed to thinking of this as _his_ room," Sesshomaru said. "Although as the new demon lord I should have become its next occupant, I did not want to move in. Other than the soft furnishings having to be cleaned regularly and changed occasionally, I have left it more or less unaltered. I found your mother's hairpin in here. She had her own room, as you know, but they were a loving couple – she spent almost all her nights here when he was alive."

"I never saw Mama come in here, and I never entered either."

"I am sorry to say that I had the door kept locked and guarded at all times when you lived here before. Forgive me for that act of selfishness – I felt that your mother had already taken so much of Father's heart, I wanted to keep what I had left of his memories to myself."

Sesshomaru found that it was becoming less agonising for him to put his arrogance aside and apologise to Inuyasha for past and present wrongs as he went down this new path of discovering who his brother was as a person, and what he might be to him in the future.

"I guess it must have been hard for you too," Inuyasha said, his eyes gradually opening to the knowledge that Sesshomaru's own history had not necessarily been easy.

"That was no excuse. The swords are there on the wall before you – Tenseiga and Tetsusaiga. Father deliberately broke off one of his massive fangs when he was in his full dog form, and had his swordsmith friend, Totosai, who was also one of my godfathers, craft it into two blades. So the two swords, you see, were originally one great tooth. Father intended one of them for me, and the other for you."

"Really? I never knew that. Which one was meant for me?"

"Tetsusaiga. It is a most powerful and well-made sword, even if it may look to you like a thin and ragged blade."

"Have you used it before?" the prince asked his brother.

"I cannot touch it."

"What do you mean?"

"Father designed a spell that made it impossible for me, or anyone without human blood, to grasp the Tetsusaiga's hilt without getting hurt. He left me the Tenseiga."

"So the Tenseiga must be even more powerful than the Tetsusaiga?"

"Hardly. The Tenseiga was forged to be so blunt that it can only cut air and spirit."

"Why would Father leave you a sword that cannot cut?" Inuyasha asked in amazement, for his great demon brother surely deserved a mighty weapon from their father.

"I do not know. I resented you for that too – for having to hear it from Totosai and from Father's flea-demon follower Myoga, that before our sire left the castle to defend your mother and you from his enemies, he had told them his last wishes with respect to the swords – the Tenseiga was for me, and the Tetsusaiga for his unborn child, be it a son or a daughter. Totosai and Myoga were the ones who recovered the swords from the field of battle after your mother returned to the castle with you in her arms. They brought Father's body back to the castle, and we gave him a fire burial, as was fitting for a great demon lord and warrior. Totosai left the swords in my care. It enraged me that I could not grasp the Tetsusaiga, and I found the Tenseiga useless. So I had them both mounted on the wall in Father's room. I have not touched them since."

"What's that sword you sometimes carry around with you, then?" Inuyasha asked curiously.

"Tokijin, forged under my orders by the swordsmith Kaijinbo, Totosai's enemy and rival. I sought him out at a time when our land was still at peace, knowing that he would do what Totosai refused to do for me. But not long after that, he joined our enemies and turned against Father and me. He even came to the castle for Tokijin in the midst of the battle, believing it would heed his commands because he was its maker. The sword did listen to him – for a mere moment – until he proved too weak to wield it, and it destroyed him on the spot, then permitted me to reclaim it. It is certainly powerful, for it was made from the teeth of a demon that I heard had once snapped the Tetsusaiga with a bite. Father had to re-forge Tetsusaiga after that, but it apparently became stronger following the break."

Inuyasha looked up at his brother with his startlingly wide eyes, in which ever-more new knowledge was dawning. "All that made you sad, didn't it?" he asked in wonder, surprised to discover that Sesshomaru could feel such emotion.

Sesshomaru was silent and thoughtful, not quite knowing how to answer his brother honestly without sounding as if he was indulging in self-pity.

The silence said all he needed to say, for Inuyasha understood it. The half-demon then spoke these heartfelt words: "I wish nothing of the sort had ever happened in those days to make you sad. I wish Father had left you the sword you wanted."

His naturally affectionate nature had never been entirely suppressed by living so many years alone, and it made him want to move closer to his older brother, perhaps even hug him, now that he had a glimpse of what the demon lord had been through as a prince; but physical touch had become such a sensitive matter between them that he dared not make contact, lest Sesshomaru misunderstand.

"It is all in the past, and what is past cannot be changed, but perhaps it can be built upon in a better way," his brother told him. "None of it was your fault, although when I was younger, I liked to tell myself that it was all because of you. That was only a sorry excuse to neglect you and shield myself from hurt. Father was fond of games in his own way. Many of his games were painful to play through, but they always proved to have a point by the end. Perhaps we shall learn in time what game he is making us endure so long after his death."

Sesshomaru reached up and grasped the scabbards of both swords, one in each hand, removing them from their parallel mounts.

"These are the scabbards I told you about, which came from the branches Bokusen'o gave to Father. They are quite powerful in their own right, and closely connected to the blades – I saw the Tetsusaiga's scabbard call the blade to fly over to it once, in a battle when Father dropped the sword. Here. You may take what is yours."

Inuyasha received the Tetsusaiga, one hand closing over the scabbard and the other over the hilt.

"What you have just done so easily, I cannot do – hold the hilt, I mean – without getting my hands badly burnt. My two godfathers told me that Father had this blade created especially to defend your mother, so it is said that it may be wielded only by those with human blood, or by those who wish to defend humans. But then it was specifically meant also to be left to you, his second child, so I believe you ought to be able to wield it in any situation."

"There are so many things I don't know, that I don't understand," Inuyasha said, staring at the sword in his hands.

"That makes two of us. Perhaps we shall find out together. I've told Jaken that your lessons this morning will be conducted by me. So let's try out that blade of yours. Tenseiga may be able to cut nothing significant, but it is decent enough as a defensive blade, and is good for sparring."

"I've only ever used staffs, sticks, slings and stuff like that. I don't know how to use a sword," Inuyasha admitted reluctantly.

"Then you will learn."

They went outdoors to the open field before the royal wing, and Inuyasha drew the Tetsusaiga. To his amazement, the thin little blade that emerged from the scabbard flared into a mighty sword, broad and powerful, pulsing in his hands.

"It's magic – I think it's alive…" Inuyasha remarked in wonder as he felt what seemed like the sword's heartbeat.

"See that fur at the base of the blade? That was some of Father's fur. I don't know how old Totosai contrived to make it show up when the blade flares, but somehow it does," Sesshomaru explained. "When Father wielded the Tetsusaiga, it was a mighty thing – bigger by far than what you have in your hands now. As your strength grows, the blade will also grow in size when you use it."

"I'm not sure that I know how to use it," the half-demon prince said, tensing his knuckles over the hilt.

"It is best to start by learning how to hold your sword in one hand, not gripped in two hands like a garden hoe."

"It's so heavy, if I hold it in one hand, won't it unbalance me once I move?"

"You are strong enough to wield it as it should be wielded," Sesshomaru said, a firm note of encouragement in his voice.

The half-demon transferred his grip on the sword to his right hand alone, and leaned back to keep from being tipped over by the massive blade.

"It is usual to start training with a wooden sword, or a light, blunt blade – but you have our father's blood, and I do not doubt that you have the ability to master this sword. Once you have this first session under your belt, I will let you use a lighter sword purely for training. But for now, get to know your father's fang." Sesshomaru then stepped up to him, and asked: "May I?"

At Inuyasha's nod, he took the scabbard from his other hand and slipped it into his sash, securing it with a thin tie. Then he went around and stood very close behind Inuyasha before closing his right hand over his brother's sword hand. After rather formally asking his permission again, he wrapped his other arm about Inuyasha's waist.

It felt strange, and an involuntary tingle ran through Inuyasha's body. Before the night of the demon-bird attack, Sesshomaru had touched him only in a sexual way, and it was odd to have him holding him so close now, not to violate him in any way, but to teach him how to move with the sword that now belonged to him.

"This will be a little easier in the air," Sesshomaru said beside Inuyasha's right ear, whose soft-furred flap twitched and tingled to hear his deep voice so close. "You may put your feet on mine."

Inuyasha cautiously stepped backwards to place his heels on top of Sesshomaru's boots, feeling more than ever like a little child who was still small enough to stand on his father's feet in order to accomplish things that he could never do on his own. Within moments, the demon lord was floating above the ground, moving Inuyasha's right arm in a simple but fluid series of movements, while his feet, legs and upper body gave the boy a sense of where his weight should be with each swing of the blade, as if they were engaged in an unusual and exhilarating dance.

"Moving the blade smoothly like this is safe enough for now, as you learn how to handle the sword and understand its dimensions," the demon lord spoke again into his ear. "But when you have mastered the blade's destructive techniques, you will have to be careful where you aim it when you take a big swing, because it could possibly tear down an entire castle wing, along with everyone in it."

Inuyasha's eyes widened as his respect for the blade in his hand grew. He could feel Sesshomaru's powerful muscles against his back, moving under the fabric of his robe, and the caress of the demon lord's hair flowing forward around them to merge with his hair like streams of silver. Those firm, strong fingers covered his own, their grip sure and steady without being too restrictive. In all, it was an intimate hold, but if Sesshomaru was aroused by their proximity, he exhibited no sign of it. If only things had been this way right from the start, Inuyasha thought…

They returned to ground, and the elder brother released the younger.

"Now do it on your own," the demon lord said. Inuyasha eagerly went through the motions while Sesshomaru walked around him and guided him through his first training session, reminding and prompting him as he went along: "Move your entire body as one with the sword, not just your arm. Even when you are in a position where you cannot move your body but only your wrist or your arm, remember to keep the strength flowing from those muscles that are remaining still into those that are in motion. Keep your weight balanced without leaning too far in any one direction – find your centre – keep a sense of that centre always. If you are pushed off balance, bear in mind that instinctively righting yourself may be just the trap your opponent is waiting for you to fall into. There are always different ways of recovering your balance – learn them, learn where your centre is in a variety of positions, and how to get back to it. Also make it a point to discover how you may counterattack from a defensive position, or do damage to your opponent even when you are thrown off balance and are attempting to get back onto your feet, especially if he comes in for the kill then."

Every now and then, Sesshomaru would glide over and correct a turn of the boy's body, the positioning of his shoulder, or the placement of his feet. Sometimes, he nudged Inuyasha off-balance to see how he would respond, and tested how he would move if he came at him with his Tenseiga.

"Good," said Sesshomaru, stepping back and sheathing the Tenseiga after an hour more of such training. "Your movements are still unrefined and far too bold for one just starting to work with a sword. But you are nimble and strong and know instinctively how to handle a weapon, even one as heavy as this. We shall stop here for now, and continue tomorrow."

"I'm not tired at all!" Inuyasha insisted. "I can carry on!"

"You may not be tired, but you must give your mind and muscles time to process what new things they have learnt, and to refresh themselves. As we go along in the days and months to come, your training will get longer and more difficult, and by that time, you will be asking me when we can stop."

He knew he was presuming that Inuyasha would voluntarily remain here long enough for them to have days and months of training to look forward to. But to think otherwise felt surprisingly painful to him at this time, and the boy had not asked to leave – yet. He was treading a very fine line whose path he could not see, sensing it only vaguely with his feet and heart, yet knowing that if he strayed from it in any way, Inuyasha would either be frightened off, or resume hating him.

"I've _never_ asked anyone to stop something just because it was hard work for me!" Inuyasha declared, oblivious to the multi-layered considerations troubling his brother's mind. He sheathed his Tetsusaiga and caught up with Sesshomaru, who had indicated with a movement of his head and one hand that they should proceed to another part of the castle grounds.

"I do not doubt that," the demon lord said, with a gentle smile. He reached out to tuck a stray lock of Inuyasha's hair back into place, and Inuyasha let him do so without pulling away or flinching. In their first days together, Sesshomaru would have regarded this as an invitation to continue; but he did not wish to abuse the fragile trust his brother was only just starting to place in him, so he drew his hand back once the hair was in place, and did not offer to touch him again.

Sesshomaru led him towards the patch of forest, and they strolled through it until they stood before Bokusen'o.

"Here are the scabbards you gave to these swords, Ancient One," Sesshomaru said to the tree. "My brother has his blade, as my father wished him to."

Inuyasha jumped about three feet into the air when Bokusen'o did not speak in those silent words he had used with him before, but replied with actual, vocal words even as a face magically appeared in the bark of the trunk right before his eyes.

"So you have come to your senses at last, have you, Sesshomaru?" the mouth in the face in the tree said, as a pair of wise old eyes gazed upon the two brothers.

Sesshomaru bowed and answered: "Yes, Godfather. Thank you for honouring me with your conversation once more."

"Godfather?" Inuyasha questioned.

"Little prince," Bokusen'o said, turning his eyes full on him. "I was one of your brother's two godfathers, and I came ever so close to disowning him. But I have chosen to remain his godfather although it has been many years since I last spoke to him. Now, I am yours also. It was what your father wished, before he died."

"You're _my_ godfather too?" Inuyasha asked in wonder. He had never had any such person in his life to fulfil such a role.

"I am."

"So… um… can you really uproot yourself like you said you would if I wasn't treated well…?" Inuyasha asked, casting a playful sideway glance at his brother, whose face revealed no emotion in reaction to the threat he was now hearing about.

"I can," Bokusen'o said. "It is of course in my nature to remain rooted to the soil – it is my natural habitat, and we tree demons prefer not to move if we can help it. However, in times of extreme necessity, we are quite capable of getting up and moving off, and swinging a few branches about. I would have stood with your father against his enemies, but the truth was that I would have been clumsy at best by his side, and I think he knew it, for he ordered me to remain safe and alive for as long as I could, to give guidance to his children – if they would listen."

"Why didn't you speak to me like this when I first met you?" Inuyasha asked.

"Look at the way you reacted when I did," Bokusen'o replied. "Had you not been in your brother's presence when I first spoke to you in this manner, you would most likely have been startled enough to kick me right over. Your brother is as cool as a stream in early spring, but you are as jumpy as your father was when he was a slip of a boy."

"Well, no one ever expects a tree to pop a face out of its trunk!" Inuyasha retorted, reddening slightly.

"My point exactly."

"Hmmph," Inuyasha mumbled, tucking his hands awkwardly into his sleeves and turning away a little to hide his embarrassment at having started so when the tree spoke.

Sesshomaru looked at him, moved again by his unguarded, childlike behaviour, so unlike his own cold, studied responses to the world at large.

And the tree looked at them both and thought: _Together at last, but such a long distance still to travel…_

…

Hours later, he longed to give Inuyasha a goodnight kiss, but there was no possibility of that being an acceptable act while things were the way they still were, with both of them inching carefully around the invisible new space they were creating between themselves.

Sesshomaru, who could command almost anything to be done within his kingdom, felt powerless, knowing that he could not order affection and desire as he might order obedience and compliant behaviour. He could only hope that the space they were creating would become a private refuge that they could both freely enter in the future, and that it would not mould itself instead into a no-man's-land, an impassable barrier between their two individual worlds.

"Sleep well," was all he said to his brother after walking him to his room door when they had finished a very late dinner after a long day spent in the forest, talking to Bokusen'o.

"You too," Inuyasha answered carefully while his wide golden eyes searched his brother for any tell-tale signs of lust that would give him a reason to withdraw into himself again, or demand that he be allowed to leave the castle at once.

Seeing nothing to trouble him, the prince opened his room door and closed it behind him, leaving Sesshomaru to walk the short stretch of corridor to his own room and shut himself in with his unexpressed yearnings.


	19. First Blood

"Not like that!" Sesshomaru corrected his brother, who had come lunging at him with the wooden practice sword he had selected for him earlier that morning in the training hall beside the barracks. "You're leaving yourself too open to a counterattack!"

"But this…" the prince grunted as he clashed swords with Sesshomaru, "…is the way I've always fought!"

"Always doing something a certain way does not mean there is no better way," Sesshomaru said, easily keeping him at bay with the Tenseiga even as he reached his other arm out and firmly poked Inuyasha in the tummy. "Feel that – I could easily have driven my claws clean through your belly as you came at me."

They were in one of the two training halls used by the soldiers and guards of the castle for their workouts and martial arts sessions. The military and security personnel primarily used the other one, knowing that this hall was occasionally required for Lord Sesshomaru's own use, or for performances and demonstrations to impress or entertain important guests that might be visiting the castle.

The two brothers currently had the place to themselves, with all the doors along both sides of the hall closed, for neither of them particularly wanted an audience.

"I would have survived even if you had," Inuyasha growled, straining to keep a proper distance between them while not allowing the Tenseiga to force his wooden sword downwards.

"Perhaps you would, but purging my poison from your body could never be a pleasant experience," Sesshomaru smiled grimly as he spoke. It was a knowing expression, one that summed up the troubled years of war and decadence, when he had often injected his venom into the flesh of unfortunate enemies and occasionally had the time and space to watch the effects at his leisure.

The smile made Inuyasha's blood rise – how could this insufferably powerful demon brother of his manage to smile as he grappled with an opponent who was almost as strong as himself?

He pressed forward, but Sesshomaru used his momentum against him and threw him off. He flew backwards through the air, but landed lightly on his feet and went charging at the demon lord again.

This time he kept his arms lower than before, protecting his body while making it easier for him to thrust his sword in any direction in response to Sesshomaru's moves. "Okay, I see your point – but when I do this, I'm sacrificing the option of bringing this crashing down on your head… like… _this!_ " he yelled, leaping into the air and swinging his blunt training weapon in the direction of Sesshomaru's silky white crown.

"If your opponent can fly as high or higher than you can jump, what would be the purpose of that?" Sesshomaru countered, dodging the blow, levitating and rising above Inuyasha to deal him a neat tap on his head with the tip of his soft deerskin boot.

Irked by receiving what felt to him like an enormous boot-sole imprint on his hair, Inuyasha swung wildly back and would have smacked Sesshomaru in the hip with the broad side of his sword had the demon lord not thrust his own weapon in the way to block the blow. He then jumped lightly upon the blade of Inuyasha's sword, used it as a step to get one foot onto the half-demon's head again, and jumped away just as the prince stabbed at the air above him.

In half a second, Sesshomaru was close to the ground again, and a graceful, circular, low sweep of his long right leg forced Inuyasha off-balance. As the half-demon righted himself, he found the tip of his brother's training weapon just kissing his throat.

"What did I tell you yesterday?" Sesshomaru asked rhetorically. "An astute enemy can see what you will do to right yourself after he puts you off-balance, and he will be already waiting there, barely having to move as you impale yourself on his blade. Try again!"

Sesshomaru kicked the boy off his feet once more, and this time Inuyasha went against his instincts and found another way to recover his stance, one that Sesshomaru could not predict and take advantage of.

"Better – but keep on the move – because you have now left your side exposed!" Sesshomaru told him, turning his sword and dealing him a thump in the ribs with its hilt.

"Aaargh!" Inuyasha growled in frustration, unused to such sophisticated swordplay, feeling greatly tempted to toss his training weapon into the corner of the hall and lunge at Sesshomaru with his teeth and fangs, as he had so often had to do against all sorts of demon predators when keeping himself alive in the forests and wilds.

Sesshomaru read his mind, it seemed, for the demon lord commanded him: "Keep hold of your weapon. If you are ever disarmed, you already know how to fight with claws and fangs – but until then, learn to use a sword with skill – we may be animal-demons, but we are not mere beasts, so do not resort unnecessarily to behaving like one."

"Sometimes it's just a whole lot more fun with claws!" Inuyasha shouted, ignoring the instructions and smacking the Tenseiga aside to sink ten sharp points into Sesshomaru's shoulders. He did not dig his claws in as he did not genuinely wish to hurt his brother, but the tips did go in just far enough to draw pinpoints of blood.

"Undoubtedly," Sesshomaru's voice rumbled in Inuyasha's face as he enjoyed his temporary physical proximity to the boy while knowing that he should not permit it in combat. "But it's really not – very – civilised –" With that, he knocked Inuyasha's sword out of his hand, sprang into the air, closed his right fist around the entire thickness of his brother's hair and tugged his head back and up, leaving the lad dangling by his long tresses a few feet off the ground, swinging his arms and kicking his legs at the demon lord in frustration.

Sesshomaru swung him away, dropped him, and motioned to him to unsheathe his Tetsusaiga. "Outside, now – let's not have you tearing this shed down with a misplaced blow!"

The demon lord burst through the central door on the east wall of the training hall, with the half-demon bounding after him, Tetsusaiga flaring boldly in the morning sunshine.

The soldiers and guards who had been shut out of the hall now raced after them to watch, excited by what they were seeing, as the brothers took to the nearest open field, blade clashing wildly against blade, and the half-demon prince's missiles of his own blood smashing into the demon lord's poison whip.

"Unless you are truly in dire straits, do not use your blades of blood!" Sesshomaru shouted across to Inuyasha as he saw his brother dipping his claws into his own chest once more to draw out drops of blood which his half-demon powers allowed him to turn into sharp, liquid weapons. "Why deplete an important resource within your own body that gives you strength?"

"Fine!" Inuyasha snarled back, ceasing his use of that alternative and focusing on wielding Tetsusaiga, employing his own swiftness of movement to tackle Sesshomaru.

All the spectators assumed that their king would easily get the better of his impulsive, untrained younger brother, but as the two swords clashed and sang, the members of the castle community saw with their own eyes that Inuyasha was incredibly strong for a half-demon of his age, with an untamed boldness and a delightfully unconventional fighting style. Sesshomaru had many powerful demons in his army and among his security personnel, but every one of them had to admit that they would be hard-put to defend their limbs and lives should they ever be engaged in a real battle with either of the royal brothers. The siblings had, after all, inherited their mighty father's strength – although neither had developed it to the fullest yet – and no single demon who walked the earth or flew above it had ever been a match for the late demon lord's sheer power.

The duel the pair engaged in, as much in the air as on the ground, was compelling to watch for its ferocity and speed, Sesshomaru's unflappable elegance a neat foil to Inuyasha's dramatic swipes, leaps and gymnastics.

Sparks flew as the blades scraped their edges and planes against each other with every strike, each portion of their father's enormous fang blazing against the other, finding its other half from which it had been made separate long ago, as if seeking to merge into one again. Most of the spectators had once thought that the best metal made the strongest blades, but it became plain to the awe-struck audience that nothing they knew was quite as hard or resilient as the dental structures of the late demon lord when he had been in his gigantic full-dog shape.

While Sesshomaru had the superior strength and skill, Inuyasha was feisty and dogged, and his determination against his opponent even in a mock-fight soon saw him getting the point and edge of his blade close enough to his brother such that if it had been a real duel, Sesshomaru's skin would surely have been nicked.

Sesshomaru saw Inuyasha pull back and hold back when he realised how close he had come to grazing him. The demon lord wanted Inuyasha to push them both to their limits, so he fired a volley of provocative words at the lad: "Holding back, Inuyasha? Too fearful to engage me to the fullest? Are you afraid that your half-demon nature will show itself to be far too fragile against my powers?"

Spurred by those words, Inuyasha growled and unleashed his speed and strength, and came close once again to touching Sesshomaru with the point of his sword.

Surprised now by Inuyasha's superbly bold moves, Sesshomaru pushed him even harder, and then drove him back till he was on the defensive. At this point the half-demon only grew more challenging to keep at bay, for he battled ferociously and in unpredictable ways to restore the balance, until in a sudden and unexpected lunge, he pushed the Tetsusaiga up and out – and sent the blade deep into Sesshomaru's left arm.

Flesh and muscle split and parted beneath the blade's edge till the great fang scraped against bone, and blood gushed out of the wound, filling the air with its distinctive scent and soaking into Sesshomaru's white robe, turning it an ugly shade of red.

For one moment – just one fraction of a second while the blade was still cutting through Sesshomaru's arm – Inuyasha felt a burst of triumph swell in his chest as he scented the blood and knew that he had got the better of his stronger, more powerful brother for once, and dealt him a fair blow that in some primal way was payback for the wrongs he had done him and his mother.

But in the next fraction of that same second, the half-demon felt nothing but horror as the same knowledge hit his heart and mind from a completely different angle: _Oh no, what have I done?_

At that point where he could have chosen to push on and sever the demon lord's arm, he chose instead to pull back and pull away, sparing his brother's limb further damage. The exchange ended as both combatants landed lightly on their feet on the grass, at a distance from each other.

"Sesshomaru!" Inuyasha yelled in alarm once his feet were back on solid ground. He dropped his sword and rushed to the demon lord's side.

"Good move," Sesshomaru said calmly, sheathing the Tenseiga quickly before clutching at the wound with his right hand.

"I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…" Inuyasha gasped. "I didn't mean to do that!"

"You did well," Sesshomaru replied evenly, his voice not betraying any of the pain he felt.

"Oh gods," Inuyasha cried, looking at all the blood and seeing the gaping wound beneath his brother's slashed robe and the tight grip of his fingers.

The prince tore off his own sash and pressed it against the wound to staunch the flow of blood, as some of the officers who had been watching the duel gave swift orders to their soldiers to fetch clean water and bandages.

"I'm so sorry," Inuyasha said again, tears springing into his eyes, as he saw that if he had struck any harder, Sesshomaru's left arm could well have come clean off.

"Silly boy – these things happen in training."

"I should have been using the wooden sword…"

"It was I who suggested that you use the Tetsusaiga."

Soldiers bearing basins of water, clean cloths and bandages were now by their side, and someone had called for Sesshomaru's personal healer, an old dog demon who now rushed over to them from the castle building, and whose face Inuyasha remembered from his childhood.

The old healer begged Sesshomaru to sit down on the grass. He knelt beside him and glared at Inuyasha as he almost slapped the half-demon's hands away from Sesshomaru's arm. The demon lord stopped him with his right hand.

"Yoshi, this was purely a training accident," Sesshomaru growled. "My brother is not to blame. Although I deeply respect your skills and your loyalty to me, I shall not look kindly upon any behaviour or expressions that indicate contempt for your prince."

"Yes, my lord," the chastened Yoshi replied, bowing low to both the brothers before carefully lifting the sash a little to see how bad the injury was.

"But it _is_ my fault," Inuyasha insisted angrily.

"You did not intend to injure me, so I do not hold it against you," Sesshomaru told him. "Indeed, were we engaged in a real fight, and you meant to wound me deeply and succeeded, I would still not hold it against you, for that is the reality of combat."

Yoshi pressed down on the wound for several minutes, assisting Sesshomaru's powerful demon spirit-energy in stopping the flow of blood and preventing the muscles from tearing any further. The healer then sought and obtained permission to cut Sesshomaru's sleeve open for better access to his upper arm. He rent the fabric from where it was already slashed, wet a piece of cloth and wiped carefully around the site of the injury to remove all the blood obscuring it, took a closer look at the extent of the gash, and murmured to himself as he went swiftly through the selection of bandages and ointments in his carrying case to find a suitable length of fabric and blend of medication that would hold everything in place until the demon lord could return to his room for further treatment.

In a very short time, he had bound Sesshomaru's arm firmly in layers of bandaging, and slung another strip of fabric from the arm to the shoulder to prevent him from moving his limb too much. Then Sesshomaru got up and directed his steps towards the castle. He walked steadily, requiring no support from Yoshi or Inuyasha, who hovered uncertainly near him before dashing back to where he had dropped the Tetsusaiga on the grass. He quickly wiped the blade clean of Sesshomaru's blood, sheathed it, and caught up with his brother and the healer.

Back in the demon lord's bedroom, attendants moved about quickly but quietly, fetching whatever Sesshomaru and the healer needed. Inuyasha stood miserably by the bed until Sesshomaru said to him: "Go back to your room or go for a walk in the gardens. Stop worrying. I will be perfectly fine."

The boy hesitated.

"Go on," Sesshomaru told him. "I will see you later."

Inuyasha went to his room, upset by how he had so lacked control of his sword that he had inflicted such serious injury on Sesshomaru. It further upset him when one half of his mind questioned the other as to whether the blow had truly been unintentional: had he suppressed so much anger and resentment for his brother that he might in fact have _wanted_ to hurt him badly – or even kill him?

His heart said no, stressing repeatedly that he would never deliberately injure someone to such an extent in mock-combat. His head toyed with his heart, questioning him again about whether his motives might be concealed even from himself.

Agitated, Inuyasha left his room and walked out to the patch of forest, where he stood before Bokusen'o and hung his head.

"What is the matter, Inuyasha?" the tree demon asked, showing his face.

"I hurt Sesshomaru," he confessed. "We were training with our swords, and I wounded him really badly. He could have lost his arm."

"Perhaps he _should_ have," came a strange voice from high above him, which was not Bokusen'o's.

Inuyasha's head snapped up to see a doddery old figure, shabbily dressed and carrying strange tools, mounted on a bug-eyed cow and hovering in the sky above the tree demon. The guards on duty at the perimeter wall were already running towards the spot, eyes focused skyward, as they rushed to deal with the intruder. Two soldiers mounted on fire cats were also flying at top speed towards the strange demon.

"Who the hell are you?" Inuyasha asked angrily, his hand going to the hilt of the Tetsusaiga.

"Let's have a look at that sword of yours," the stranger said coolly in a gravelly voice, completely ignoring the soldiers converging on him.

"Are you crazy? You're not touching my sword!" Inuyasha exclaimed.

Just as the guards and soldiers seemed on the point of pouncing on the uninvited visitor, the latter spat out a powerful stream of fire from his mouth, ringing it about him and blocking off those who had come to intercept him.

"Hey! What's with you?" Inuyasha demanded, unsheathing the Tetsusaiga and springing into the air, where he would have charged through the wall of fire – quite forgetting that he wasn't wearing his protective fire rat robe – had Bokusen'o not reached out one long and surprisingly pliable branch, curled it about his left ankle, and yanked him back down.

"Bokusen'o!" the prince protested, fighting to free his leg.

"Calm down, Inuyasha," the tree demon said in his low and steady voice. "All of you, calm down."

The guards and soldiers looked surprised to be spoken to by the tree – Inuyasha guessed that they had probably always known of this ancient plant demon who dwelt on the castle grounds, but had never had the privilege of hearing him speak.

"Totosai, you careless old codger," Bokusen'o boomed at the visitor still in the air above him. "Have you no sense? You could have set all my leaves afire."

The ring of flames dispersed, and the visitor and his flying mount slowly descended to the ground. "Of course I wouldn't have set all your leaves on fire, you old stick of wood," the swordsmith protested. "I think I can aim better than that – besides, you've been singed by my flames a good many times, and you've _never_ caught fire."

" _You're_ Totosai?" Inuyasha asked in disbelief, staring at the shabbily dressed figure before him who looked so decrepit that had he not just seen the blast of firepower from him, he would have thought him a mere old man who could be blown over by a gust of wind.

"I believe that is my name – at least it was the last time I checked, you silly young prince," the swordsmith replied. "Now let's look at that sword I made."

The guards hung back, the older ones among them lowering their weapons as they realised that this fire demon was one of Lord Sesshomaru's godfathers.

Cautiously, Inuyasha handed his blade over to the old fellow, who took it from him, peered at it in a short-sighted manner, murmured to himself, then took out a strip of leather and began polishing the blade while muttering: "How did it get so rusty? I suppose the spiteful young fool must have stuck it up on the wall for the last two hundred years…"

"It's a fang," the half-demon growled impatiently. "Teeth don't get _rusty_."

"Well, as rusty as a tooth can get, this one's rusty," Totosai grumbled, polishing away at the blade.

It occurred to Inuyasha that the spell his father had placed on the Tetsusaiga to keep all demon hands other than his own off the sword must not apply to Totosai, who was after all the blade's maker and legitimate steward.

"I do indeed smell my idiot godson's blood all over the blade," Totosai murmured. "But I also hear the sword telling me that there was no malice in the blow which delivered that injury. You held back, young prince."

"I was just going over it in my head, asking myself if I couldn't have held back more – after all, it was only a training fight," Inuyasha mumbled. "I needn't have gone in that hard in the first place."

"You did right," Totosai told him, returning the Tetsusaiga to him after a final buffing stroke of the leather strip. "The sword knows that when you had a choice between pressing on and pulling back, you pulled back, and it knows that possibly better than you yourself do. I am returning the Tetsusaiga to you now only because of that goodness in your heart that stayed your hand despite all the wrongs you suffered thanks to him."

"I don't know that there is any goodness in my heart," Inuyasha said in a subdued voice, staring at the sword and noticing for the first time how well-worn the fabric and leather were which wrapped the hilt. He realised in an instant how well-used it was, and how many living things his father must have slain with this very weapon he had in his hands – it was a deadly thing, and he had wounded Sesshomaru with it.

"Your sword tells me of that compassion within you, and the Tenseiga sang to me of its pleasure at matching blades with your weapon," Totosai stated. "If you had proven cruel and vicious, if you had tried to kill your brother, then I would have snapped your blade in two and never repaired it. Now, where's that fool of a demon lord? It's about time he and I had a talk."


	20. Ghost From The Past

Reestablishing communication with Totosai was not as straightforward as it had been to start talking to Bokusen'o again. While Sesshomaru's tree-demon godfather had ceased to speak to him for years out of disapproval at his conduct, his fire-demon godfather had fallen out with him much more violently.

Totosai's blunt refusal to forge Tokijin for Sesshomaru, followed by the demon lord's provocatively harsh words against his deceased father, then the obdurate manner in which he had barred Totosai's access to Inuyasha when the half-demon was a baby, had built up bad feeling between them and eventually culminated in a ferocious physical fight outside the castle grounds.

Now, as Sesshomaru sat stiffly on a chair in one of his meeting rooms in the administrative wing, his left arm tightly bandaged under the silky white sleeve of the fresh garment he had just changed into, he gazed coldly down at the ancient, grey-haired fire demon in drab rags as dull as his straggly hair. Totosai had stubbornly refused a chair but insisted instead on sitting cross-legged on the floor, resting his long-handled swordsmith's mallet over his shoulder.

Only the barest of acknowledgements had passed between them when they entered the room, as each remembered their last meeting, when the demon lord had disrespectfully raised his weapon against his godfather, and Totosai in self-defence had come very close to singeing every strand of Sesshomaru's beautiful platinum hair to a frizzy ebony crisp.

Standing close to the wall on one side of the room, Inuyasha watched with interest as the two powerful demons eyed each other cautiously. All three of them remained silent until Sesshomaru had dismissed the attendants and guards, and the meeting room door was firmly shut, leaving them to talk in private.

"Sit down, Inuyasha," Sesshomaru said evenly. "On a chair, please, like a well-bred prince."

Inuyasha saw that his brother was not so much giving him an order as he was talking _at_ Totosai, _through_ him.

This, he reckoned, would be interesting. So he quietly took a seat a little behind Sesshomaru and to his left.

"You certainly waited more than long enough to do the right thing," Totosai stated to the demon lord, not bothering with tact or protocol of any description. His way of hunching as he sat, his voice so gravelly that it sounded unsteady, and his manner of craning his neck to peer upward out of his bulging eyes might have made a casual observer think that he was nervous, or afraid of Sesshomaru, but the demon lord knew better. Inuyasha too could tell that behind the humble façade was a steely certainty about what he would or would not do.

"What precisely are you referring to?" Sesshomaru asked coolly.

"Giving your brother the sword that your father meant him to have, of course," Totosai answered gruffly. "You stuck both those beautiful lengths of fang up on the wall out of spite all this time, didn't you, you dolt? Two hundred years of utter silence from those magnificent blades, then at last, today, they began to sing."

"Sing?" Sesshomaru inquired icily, extremely displeased at being called a dolt to his face, although in the familial and social scheme of things, Totosai as his godfather was not without the status and authority to do so.

"Yes, that's exactly what I said – sing. I forged them, and they are able to sing to me as they did to your father, and if you would only open those too-sharp ears of yours to listen to what is truly important, you would hear them too. That goes for you as well, little one," Totosai said to Inuyasha. "With _those_ ears, you certainly should be able to hear well."

Inuyasha had always been self-conscious about his prominent puppy ears, for they were the most conspicuous physical trait that marked him as different from the humans he had been raised among. But old Totosai did not speak of his furry appendages in the hostile manner that unfriendly humans did – he spoke of them almost fondly, underneath all that grumpy warbling.

Inuyasha's instinct was to put a hand up to his pointed white-furred flaps with their soft pink insides, but a reaction like that would only expose his awkwardness, so he settled for allowing his ears to merely twitch.

Sesshomaru's excellent peripheral vision caught the softly twitching flaps, which made his lips betray the trace of a smile. When he turned his attention back to Totosai, however, the smile was nowhere to be seen.

"Did you come here purely to tell us of your fascinating ability to communicate with teeth, _Godfather_?" Sesshomaru asked.

"Oh, I could go on at length about teeth – dog-demon teeth, ogre teeth, dragon teeth, fangs, incisors, molars… mmm… but I don't suppose you'd really be interested…" Totosai's speech tapered off as a strangely distant look came over his face, and he appeared to have suddenly fallen asleep with his staring eyes wide open.

Inuyasha raised his eyebrows and leaned forward to stare curiously at the fire demon. But Sesshomaru seemed accustomed to such eccentric behaviour, for the demon lord sat unmoving and unmoved until Totosai snapped to life again, prompted by no apparent signal that anyone could see, only to murmur: "What was I saying?"

"You were saying nothing that I cared to hear about teeth," Sesshomaru replied.

"Ah – yes, of course – teeth that you care nothing about, you unkind moron. What a way to treat your father's fang…"

"Are we _still_ talking about that?" Sesshomaru asked dryly.

"Well, it's important!" Totosai snapped, slapping his own knee for emphasis. "Your father didn't break off that great tooth of his for nothing, you know! He knew that one of his massive fangs would make the best possible weapons and instruments for his own use, but he also wished to leave them to his children. And he had me make them in ways that would bring out the best in both his offspring!"

"He left me a sword that could not cut to bring out the best in me?" remarked the demon lord ironically. "How, pray tell, does that work?"

"Precisely what your royal sire's plan was is something that you will have to discover for yourself – it does no good to have someone report to you how it is meant to turn out, does it? It's the same difference between having someone telling you how you are supposed to train for combat, and actually going through the training. I can suggest, however, that you ought to listen to your Tenseiga. If you learn to hear its voice, it will be able to guide you in critical situations. Perhaps you ought to have learnt to listen to it long ago – but then you never did want to listen to anything you preferred not to hear. Much use your sharp ears are."

Sesshomaru considered this piece of advice and sat in silence digesting it.

"As for you, young one," Totosai said to Inuyasha. "The Tetsusaiga was designed to match and magnify your natural strength, while keeping your demon blood from taking over your soul."

"What _are_ you talking about?" Inuyasha questioned. "Didn't my father have this sword made before I was born? How could he design it to match me? And I'm naturally _half_ -demon, aren't I? How can the demon part of me take over my soul?"

"Your father had met your mother by the time he decided to have me craft two swords that he – or anyone else who wished to protect one of human blood – could wield in her defence. In his wisdom, he knew what kind of power a child of theirs would turn out to have. Once you were conceived, he could feel the strength of your spirit-energy growing, and twice, he had me fine-tune the sword to fit your nature better. He could not tell for certain if you were a male or female child in the womb, but he knew you were very strong."

"And the demon blood thing?" Inuyasha pressed for an answer.

"You wouldn't know about that as I doubt you have ever been pushed near enough to the brink for it to take over. A half-demon like you, who at times becomes fully human for a while – yes, I know about that – also faces times when he is capable of turning full-demon. But because you were not born a full demon, you haven't the ability – at least not at _your_ age – to control your demon strength and instincts when that happens. Perhaps when you are older and more powerful you will be able to govern it. But at this stage in your life, the demon blood would take over your entire mind and body, and you would cease to think or feel. You would kill everything in sight, and eventually destroy yourself."

Inuyasha's eyes had opened so wide by this time that if the topic had not been so serious, it would have been a comical sight.

"So… what kind of stuff could push me over the edge?" he asked Totosai in a hushed voice.

"Well, I couldn't say for certain as it has never happened," the fire demon remarked vaguely. "I would imagine that being on the verge of getting killed, or being forced to keep fighting even when you are critically wounded, might bring out the entire demon part of you, which will instinctively emerge to keep you alive for a while longer. Which is why it is important, now that you are approaching maturity and gaining greater physical strength by the year, that you should keep the Tetsusaiga with you at all times."

"My life's been in danger lots and lots and _lots_ of times," Inuyasha huffed. "And I'm pretty sure I never turned into some uncontrollable killing machine on any of those occasions. I know a couple of ogres that would have been ripped into small enough shreds to fertilise large tracts of forest if merely being in danger of getting killed was enough to turn me full-demon!"

"You mean the mountain ogres who attacked you near the Grey Hills when you were about this small?" Totosai held his hand about two-and-a-half feet off the floor.

At this, both Sesshomaru's and Inuyasha's eyes narrowed as they regarded the ancient swordsmith.

"How did you know about that?" Inuyasha demanded.

"I was there."

"What? That's ridiculous! If you were there, why didn't you help me?"

"I _did_ help you, you silly child," Totosai snapped. "I burnt both those oversized bullies to ashes once you were out of the area so that they wouldn't go after you! If they had gone after you as you ran off, maybe _then_ you would have been pushed to the edge."

"Why didn't you help me _before_ that?" Inuyasha asked, raising his voice. "I was _hurt_! They – they almost – that bald one – he crushed the burrow I was hiding in with his hand, and the earth came down and I couldn't breathe, and my leg was almost smashed–"

Inuyasha broke off, overcome by reliving that terrifying episode of his childhood not long after his mother's death, swamped all over again by the bitter feelings he had had then of utter helplessness, defenceless solitude, pain and misery.

"I couldn't, child," Totosai stated flatly. "You would have seen me if I had. I waited till you were out of there. But if it's any consolation, if I had seen that you truly had been about to be killed, I would have intervened at once."

"It's no consolation!" Inuyasha snapped. "You were there, and you didn't show your face. No one showed up for me, _ever_. Mama died and that was it – I was completely alone for years and _years_ , with no one even to have a normal _conversation_ with, until Kikyo and Kaede became my friends…"

For a demon who usually maintained the most unemotional of facades, Sesshomaru was starting to look distinctly uncomfortable, and very guilty. But Totosai was speaking again.

"I'm sorry, little one," the old swordsmith said. "Myoga and I decided that while you were in your mother's care, we should leave you alone to see if you could integrate into human society, into her family. We continued to keep out of sight after your mother's passing, to give you a chance to make your way back among your human relations somehow, or perhaps find your own social group. Perhaps we shouldn't have pushed it quite so far for so long, but when you were eventually accepted by the priestesses and by the village you most recently lived in, we felt we had been right not to interfere, and left you there to live in peace. We did, however, secretly keep an eye on you all the time that you were out in the wilds on your own, between your mother's death and your arrival at the village."

"It was my fault," Sesshomaru spoke up at last, turning to his brother with a strained look in his golden eyes, which held a rare look of pain. "I told Totosai and Myoga that no demon tribe or group would ever accept you, and that if they tried to make a place for you in demon society, they would only be destroying you. I was speaking for myself then, and not for all demons, because I was still young and foolish enough to hate you. I was wrong to have done that, Inuyasha. I should have encouraged them to step in even if I myself was too stupid to look after you as I should have."

Inuyasha stood up and glared at the two demons in the room with him, eyes shining in anger. He was quite close to tears, but he had done more than enough crying of late, and he thought that if he cried again now, it would look like nothing more than self-pitying indulgence and childish weakness. So he kept his face hard and his eyes blazing as he stood up and declared: "I think you're both idiots."

He turned on his heel and strode out of the meeting room.

Left alone together, Sesshomaru and Totosai eyed each other in silence again before the demon lord said: "I had hoped not to give him more pain for some time, but your colourful tales from the past have stirred up further anguish for him."

"Better out than in," Totosai murmured. "We would have had to deal with the facts of his abandonment by you sooner or later. So it's sooner. Better than letting it fester, no?"

"There isn't really a 'we' in this, is there, Godfather?" Sesshomaru commented, standing up. " _You're_ not the one who will have to patch things up with the boy immediately."

"Ah well, isn't that what brothers are for?" the fire demon asked airily.

…

Sesshomaru tracked Inuyasha's scent and spirit-energy to their father's room. The half-demon was seated at the edge of the bed his parents had shared, staring at the Tetsusaiga in his lap. When Sesshomaru entered, he stood up abruptly and went to the window, where he gazed out over the field that stretched out before the royal wing.

"It seems that the wrongs I have committed against you stretch back endlessly into the past, Inuyasha," Sesshomaru spoke. "I am truly sorry. I should never have left you to fend for yourself when you were still so small."

"Well, I turned out fine, didn't I?" Inuyasha answered shortly, keeping his back to his brother.

"Very fine," the demon lord said, taking Inuyasha's dismissive remark about himself and transforming it into praise for the half-demon. "But life should never have been so hard for you. That it was, was my responsibility. I do not know how I shall ever make up for all your years of loneliness and pain, but I have every intention of trying, if you will still let me. I know it gets harder and more ridiculous to you with every new revelation from the past, but please let me try."

"You really were such a bastard when I was a child, you know that?" the prince said.

"I know."

"But you know what? I think in your own sick and miserable world, you were pretty damn lonely too," he said, turning to look at Sesshomaru. "So I don't know. Maybe that makes two of us."

"Maybe it does," Sesshomaru said, thinking that Inuyasha suddenly seemed to have grown up in those few seconds.

"I guess it's not the old fellow's fault either," Inuyasha sighed. "He was trying to do what he believed was right for me."

"I accept full blame for all that took place."

The tension dissolved significantly as they spoke, and both of them stood there together looking out over the field to the far horizon beyond the castle boundaries, not quite touching, but not as far apart as they might perhaps have been, given the circumstances.

…

Inuyasha made it up with Totosai an hour later, when he felt calmer and better able to release himself from the shackles of the past that he had barely realised were still clinging to him.

In return, the old fire demon took the prince out to one of the more spacious gardens and guided him through a few paces with his Tetsusaiga, helping him to sense its power and discern the demon auras that swirled around the blade whenever it was in its transformed state – forces invisible to the untrained, but which showed the initiated the different destructive forces the blade could unleash. It was important, Totosai said, that he should sense these auras well so he would not accidentally release a blow that could kill a hundred demons in one go – why carelessly take out enemies and friends alike?

At the end of the intensive instruction, Totosai put his mallet away over his shoulder and said: "That's more than enough for today. You should not over-train."

The half-demon nodded and watched Totosai step back indoors for a further word with Sesshomaru. Naturally, Inuyasha did not heed the fire demon's advice. The moment the swordsmith was out of sight, the prince unsheathed the Tetsusaiga again and continued practising with it in the garden.

He still had not quite got the knack of wielding it with one arm – while sparring with Sesshomaru earlier, he had resorted at times to swinging the blade with both arms so as not to lose his balance and momentum. He believed it was his lack of control that had made him injure Sesshomaru so badly.

He twirled the blade, keeping his left arm behind his back to prevent the temptation to bring it into play. He was overdoing the training, and his muscles were sore, but he was obstinate and kept going. Before he knew it, he was overbalancing and getting tossed around by the wildly swinging blade. To avoid chopping down the beautiful pine tree he was under, Inuyasha ended up planting his face into the tree trunk, and scraping his left hand hard against the rough bark.

"Owww," he muttered to himself as he peeled his face off the pine.

At least, he thought he was muttering to himself, until he heard a small giggle from behind him.

He turned and saw a wolf-demon child peering at him from the corner of the castle beside the garden, and another child – a little dog-demon – peering out too from behind the first.

When they realised that they had been seen, the children's eyes widened in alarm, and they disappeared round the corner. Inuyasha followed them through the garden on the other side of the wall, and found them with a small handful of demon children of various species seated on the grass, in the company of the wolf-demon healer, Satoshi.

"I'm afraid the children have been bothering Your Highness," Satoshi said, rising quickly and bowing to the prince, prompting the little ones to stand up and bow too.

"Not at all," Inuyasha said, looking at the tiny faces staring up at him in awe, and remembering what he himself had been like as a child looking up fearfully at strange adults who looked so impressively big and tall to him. "Are you their teacher?"

"I have somehow or other – I don't quite know how – become an unofficial tutor to the children living here. They have their proper lessons, of course, but they seem to find it amusing to tag along with me and learn more about herbs and plants," the wolf demon explained bemusedly. "I can't imagine why."

Inuyasha smiled, thinking of the two priestesses back in the village, who spent hours each day taking the village children through the herb and vegetable patches, and through the safe parts of the forest, to teach them how to identify, harvest and plant useful medicinal and food flora, and how to read and write. "Children gravitate naturally towards certain grown-ups," he said. "You are obviously one of them."

"Why that should be so will be an eternal mystery to me," the wolf demon chuckled.

"I was wondering why I hadn't seen any little ones since I came back," Inuyasha remarked, bending down to pat a fox-demon toddler who had crept over to his right foot and was pulling at the soft blue leather of his suede-textured boots. "So this is where they've been hiding! Are these all of them? So few? When I was a child, this place was crawling with children."

"This is all we have at present, Your Highness," Satoshi replied. "I believe the reason why there are fewer little ones here now is that the town near the castle has grown greatly over the last one hundred years. Many of the staff now house their families in the town instead of on the castle grounds. It's better for their mates, parents and children to be able to move freely about the big town and for the children to go to school there, than be constrained by the security and etiquette restrictions necessary within the castle."

"Is that town really so developed now?" Inuyasha asked. He remembered seeing the place in his childhood only once, when his mother had finally left the castle with him, and they had passed the unimpressive collection of houses and shops on the way to her family's home town many miles away.

"Oh yes," Satoshi said. "In the last hundred years, it has really come along. It has numerous demon residents and tradespeople, as well as a small number of human shop owners who moved there from villages in this region. It has two schools, a paved main street, and a security force of its own. Three important ministers have built their homes there."

"I guess I really have been away for a long time," Inuyasha commented.

Satoshi's lilac eyes had been flicking irresistibly towards Inuyasha's forehead every few seconds, and the wolf-demon healer could no longer restrain himself. As he raised one hand in a slightly apologetic manner, he said: "I beg your pardon, Your Highness, but if you would permit me…"

He stepped forward and carefully extracted two splinters from Inuyasha's forehead, embedded there thanks to his face making contact with the pine bark.

"Damn! Did I get those stuck in there?" the prince asked, staring at the slivers of pine wood now resting on Satoshi's palm and rubbing his forehead, which made the children giggle again.

Satoshi cast the splinters aside on the grass, away from the spots where the children usually played, and cleared his throat a little as he gestured apologetically again, this time to Inuyasha's left hand. "More splinters there, Your Highness. If you would let me…"

The healer took Inuyasha's hand and gently drew several splinters out of it, casting each one aside as it came free. The removal of one of the larger splinters was followed by the appearance of a spot of blood. Satoshi immediately pulled some wrapped-up patches of clean white linen from his robe pocket. He dabbed away the blood and pressed down on the spot, then carefully lifted the linen patch and looked satisfied. "There you go."

"Great, thanks!" Inuyasha said cheerfully.

"Please do not mention it, Your Highness," Satoshi said easily. "The children are supposed to start getting ready for dinner, so I had better take them inside."

The healer and the children bowed to take their leave. Inuyasha bowed playfully in return before going back inside, by the other entrance closer to the royal wing, never realising that they had had an audience.

Sesshomaru had been watching quietly from a window above. As Satoshi extracted the bark from the half-demon's forehead and took his hand to remove the splinters there, Sesshomaru felt a surge of jealousy.

Why was it so easy for anyone else to touch Inuyasha when he, Sesshomaru, was reduced to asking permission to make contact, and carefully tiptoeing around the boy? For a second, his old instincts flared, and he found himself thinking: _I should summon that presumptuous wolf-demon healer and show him his place – he is pretty enough himself – perhaps an hour or two at my mercy, in my room, would show him who has the right to Inuyasha…_

Sesshomaru abruptly checked himself upon realising that he had left his mind unguarded and allowed his negative old instincts to speak where they should have remained silent. Satoshi had not done anything wrong; he had acted correctly and professionally as a castle healer.

Inuyasha too had done nothing wrong (other than disregard Totosai's advice not to overtrain). In truth, if the prince of this kingdom chose to use any of the castle staff or servants, or even the children, he would not be acting out of order for his rank and rights, provided that he did not go overboard and screw everything that moved, like his brother once had.

The only one behaving badly, thought Sesshomaru, was Sesshomaru. So the demon lord swallowed his jealousy, silenced the complaints of his bad habits which had been given free rein for close to two hundred years, and heeded the quiet pulse of the Tenseiga tucked into his sash.

…

With Totosai refusing a room in the castle after dinner, preferring to spend the night in the forest patch with Bokusen'o and his flying bovine mount, there was no need to assign room attendants to the old swordsmith. Sesshomaru gave orders to the guards on patrol near the forest patch to ensure that his two godfathers were not disturbed or harassed, and to bring Totosai any food or drink he asked for.

The demon lord's arm was healing swiftly, but the flesh still smarted and the bone ached. He was doing his best to ignore the discomfort while preparing to go to bed, when a knock sounded at his door.

"Come in," he said.

His heart and spirit rose when Inuyasha entered, still wearing the thick, embroidered blue jacket and trousers he had worn to dinner.

"I came to see how your arm was," Inuyasha told him. "Does it still hurt?"

"Very little," Sesshomaru replied. "It is healing well. There is no permanent damage done. Have you drunk your final dose of medicine yet?"

"I just finished it. Sesshomaru, I'm really sorry for hurting you."

"Likewise, in a different way."

"Huh. Maybe we should just stop apologising to each other all the time," Inuyasha muttered.

"Not if there are things still worth apologising for."

"Anything I can help you with before I go to bed?" the half-demon asked. "Anything that you can't do with one arm, I mean."

"You'd be surprised by how much I can get done with one working arm," Sesshomaru remarked.

Inuyasha smiled wryly. "I probably would. So if there's nothing you need…"

"There's nothing I need. But if you would like to stay and talk, you are more than welcome to."

"No, not tonight," Inuyasha said, a little too quickly. "I should just go back to my room and get some rest – it's been quite a day."

"Of course."

"Goodnight, then."

"Goodnight," Sesshomaru replied, then added just as Inuyasha was reaching for the door handle. "I won't do anything you don't want me to do to you from now on, you know. Even if you happen to be in my bedroom all night."

Inuyasha coloured a little, but summoned enough steadiness of voice to turn to Sesshomaru and answer calmly: "I know. Thank you. Sleep well."

He turned the door handle and was gone.

Sesshomaru was disappointed by his departure, but he could not in all fairness expect Inuyasha to come around in such a short time and get cosy with him as if he, Sesshomaru, had never been anything other than a kind, loving and protective brother to him. It would serve him right if the boy sought the wolf-demon's bed instead.

All he could do was to keep hoping that it was not much, much too late to heal a rift that had spent two hundred years growing into a chasm, and which threatened to grow larger and deeper with every new appearance of yet another ghost from the past like Totosai, returning to haunt them.


	21. Opening Doors

"My greatest regret is that I obeyed your father when he ordered me to stay out of the battle," Totosai admitted to Inuyasha as he sat with the half-demon in the forest patch at Bokusen'o's roots. "If I had disobeyed him – if I had only defied him and stood by him as he defended you and your mother, there is every chance that he would be alive today."

Inuyasha had had his morning lessons out in the forest with Jaken, watched over by Totosai and Bokusen'o, as well as by the flying cow. The prince's kappa tutor had then discreetly withdrawn from the forest at the end of the lesson, leaving Inuyasha to go through some more training with his sword under Totosai's guidance. When the old fire demon ended the training for the morning, Inuyasha rested with him in the shade Bokusen'o provided and talked to his godfathers.

"My next-greatest regret is that I believed your brother when he said you would never have a proper place in demon society," Totosai said, in a rare stretch of verbal clarity. "He was wrong. You have a place here, and you also have a place among humans – you should have had the _best_ of both worlds. Instead, you ended up with neither for eighty years of your life. I made mistakes listening to those two. I do not intend to repeat those mistakes."

Inuyasha turned his words over in his head for a while before saying, carefully and thoughtfully: "If you had defied my father, there is a chance that _both_ of you could have died. Then he would have had one friend less remaining in the world of the living to give advice to his sons."

"That may be true, but I am nonetheless sorry that I listened to him at such a time. I should also have ignored your brother's words and not left you lonely all by yourself in the forest. At the time, I truly believed it best for you to have no social contact with demons, as I thought you could find humans to live among after your mother's death, despite her relatives rejecting you. I thought you had a better chance there, because any half-demon is stronger by far than even a large group of humans, and you would be able to defend yourself and hold your own among them; at the time, I did not have your father's faith in your potential power, and did not know how your strength would develop. I feared that throwing you in among other demons would mean your swift demise, especially with an elder brother who was so influential, and who hated you so much. It is good to see that he does not hate you now. Far from it, if my old eyes still serve me."

"Huh. Who knows how long _that'll_ last?" the prince mumbled.

"What makes you think it won't?"

"He hated me for two hundred years, Totosai! I'm not planning to get all excited just because he's suddenly taken a fancy to me for… what? A few days? Anyway I'm not convinced that enjoying his affection isn't somewhat worse than being hated by him."

"So he got inside your trousers, did he?" Totosai asked matter-of-factly.

Inuyasha started at that comment and fervently hoped that he wasn't blushing.

The old demon peered at him and remarked: "What are you looking so embarrassed about? You could do a lot worse than Sesshomaru, you know."

"What would _you_ know, you old bag of bones?" the prince snapped, convinced that his face must be bright red by now.

"Oh," Totosai said, his goggle eyes widening even further. "I could tell you all about the exploits of my youth, the countless lovers I had everywhere, male and female, the things we did… but I don't suppose you'd really be interested."

Inuyasha's eyes grew almost as goggle-like as Totosai's, revealing his horror at the thought of having to hear in uncomfortable detail about this godfather's ancient sexual exploits. How old was this dried-up creature? Three thousand? He was certain too, that if he _had_ been blushing earlier, the rosy flush would surely have vanished instantly, for his cheeks would certainly have paled at the prospect of being forced to picture Totosai cavorting naked all over the kingdom.

"Uhm… maybe another time… when I'm not about to have lunch…" Inuyasha murmured awkwardly.

"Well, perhaps it's best not to mention most of what happened in the past," Totosai remarked, a faraway look coming into his eyes. "I promised some of those lassies I would take their secrets to my grave – naughty little things, some of those females were, particularly that green-eyed one with the large bosom and the prettiest, pinkest nipples I ever saw…"

"O-kay… maybe we should leave it at that!" Inuyasha declared with a note of finality, springing to his feet as Bokusen'o let out a low, deep chuckle and Totosai blinked away the glazed expression on his face.

"Hmm, yes, perhaps we should, before I slip and wax lyrical about her very generous derriere too – I always did like my females on the plump side," the swordsmith remarked. "So much more grabbable and pinchable than those stick-thin creatures with two bony lumps as an excuse for a backside – you need a rump you can really knead with both hands…"

Bokusen'o chuckled again to see the face Inuyasha was pulling, and interrupted his friend by saying to Inuyasha: "You probably do _not_ want to hear Totosai's ancient stories. But the old codger is right about the fact that you could do much worse than Sesshomaru, young one."

"Right – and _you_ would be experienced enough to agree with Totosai because you've spent two thousand years flirting with the rose bushes in all the gardens?" Inuyasha grumbled.

Bokusen'o's face in the trunk pulled deeper into the bark in the arboreal equivalent of a recoil. "The _rose bushes?_ " the tree demon growled. "You silly young thing – if you knew anything at all you'd never suggest that I would even speak to those air-headed, frigid shrubs. They smell sickly sweet and don't feel great either – bristling with thorns, you know. But a gentle willow, or maybe a sturdy pine, now those are a joy to rub one's trunk up against. When you get some rhythmic friction going, the sensations are quite stimulating…"

Inuyasha groaned, turned quickly away from the two demons before he heard anything more to burn his ears and raze his imagination, and fled the forest patch to the chuckles of the two godfathers.

He headed back to the castle and spent the afternoon inside his mother's old room, whose door he had not opened since his return, afraid that seeing the interior would bring back even more memories and make him sad.

But when he entered, no heaviness weighed on his heart even though the furnishings in the room were very much as they had been when his Mama had lived here. He thought the bed even held a very, very tiny hint of her scent from all those years ago – but that was surely nothing more than wishful thinking, for the mattress was new. Still, it somehow felt to him like a happy room now. It retained no trace of her former sadness, which she had always tried to conceal from him, but which he could sense as easily as he could feel his own emotions.

He opened the shutters, let in the light, and inhaled. There was no bitterness here, no anger, not even despair, for his mother had been a strong woman – as psychologically strong as she was kind of heart. There was only a gentle, calm, unselfish sadness which was dissipating even as he breathed in the physical scents and spiritual memories around him. Her soul was at peace now. He would never wish for her to return to the chaotic world of the living, much as he longed to see her again.

Her room was one door away from his. In the past, there had been a smaller room in-between that was originally meant as a nursery. But as she had raised him herself, with almost no help at all from the servants, the nursery had never been used. She would have been happy for her child to have lived in her room with her all the time, but Inuyasha vaguely recalled overhearing Sesshomaru once saying to her in a cold, curt speech that it was inappropriate for a growing child of his father's to spend all his nights inside his mother's room, beyond his infancy.

Very soon after that speech, Inuyasha had officially moved into his own bedroom. However, Sesshomaru had not troubled himself further with whether he actually slept in his room or in his mother's – the demon lord seemed to have insisted on the move for nothing more than form's sake; in all else, he left mother and child to their own devices. Inuyasha had therefore never been prevented from running over to his Mama's room every time he felt lonely, or her from visiting him.

The prince smiled to himself as he remembered pattering up and down the corridor in the middle of the night and waking his mother up at all hours, and how patiently she had tolerated the frequent disruption to her sleep.

He left her room now and stepped into the corridor. The nursery door was gone, seamlessly walled up with the same stones as the rest of the corridor wall. That had apparently been done a few years ago, when the wall between the nursery and his old bedroom had been knocked down and the two spaces merged in order to make the bedroom bigger and better for him.

To think that Sesshomaru had done that at a time when he had not even cared about Inuyasha's welfare, but had only thought that things should be done "properly" and improved to match his brother's rank, once he succeeded in compelling him to come home.

As he stood in the corridor, he caught Totosai's scent. So the swordsmith had come indoors too. A few more steps down the passageway revealed to him that Sesshomaru's room door was wide open – not how it normally was, for it was almost always kept closed except at mid-morning, when the cleaning staff were going about their work inside.

Out of curiosity, he walked past his own room and went right up to Sesshomaru's open door, to see what was going on in there.

Totosai was standing in the room, head tilted back against his shoulder blades, as he admired the painting on the ceiling above Sesshomaru's bed. Sesshomaru stood a few feet behind the old demon.

"One of my finest pieces of art, even if I say so myself," the swordsmith said to Inuyasha when he spotted the prince in the corridor.

"You were the one who painted that?" the half-demon asked, entering his brother's room as Sesshomaru inclined his head to invite him in.

"Yes, I was the painter," Totosai answered wistfully. "Those were the good old days, when your father was all excited over the idiot here, and doing all he could to humour him in every imaginable way."

The idiot in Totosai's opinion being Sesshomaru, of course.

The demon lord glowered at his godfather, but Inuyasha could sense that his brother and the fire demon had had a private talk sometime during the afternoon, probably at the same time as he was reminiscing in his mother's room. Sesshomaru seemed much less hostile towards Totosai than he had been yesterday.

"Father very quickly lost his enthusiasm for me, however," Sesshomaru said to Inuyasha.

Totosai turned to both the brothers at once, a click of impatience snapping off his tongue. "That is nonsense, and you know it, you fool," he said to the older brother. "Your father loved you every day of his life from the second you were born, to the moment he died. And he was as proud of you as any father could be. Just because your personality didn't meld well with his as you grew bigger, it doesn't mean that he loved you any less, or was any less proud of you. You'd be a clod to think he didn't care for you."

To Inuyasha, the fire demon said: "Your brother imagines that your father was disappointed in him, and that he never loved him. It might have been true that he found it hard to express his affection to such a naturally cold child, and Sesshomaru grew even icier when your sire seemed to become less outwardly loving. It was certainly true that that was the fault of them both. But he _never_ stopped loving your brother, and he trusted him to find the right way to live and rule eventually. He had such faith in him. He believed that in the end, he would do the right thing in every facet of his life."

"I am sure that my father was right to have faith in my brother," Inuyasha said politely – and rather generously, considering his previous experiences with Sesshomaru.

Totosai scratched his beard and gazed for some time at his friend's sons, apparently slipping into another spell of waking unconsciousness, before he blinked and murmured: "Hmm… yes… let's see how everything pans out, shall we? Not sticking those fine swords up on the wall for another two hundred years ought to be one step in the right direction, I suppose."

The look on Sesshomaru's face implied that he would not be too unhappy if he could jam Totosai's mouth shut with those very swords, but the demon lord kept his thoughts to himself and invited his godfather to join Inuyasha and himself for dinner.

Totosai accepted the invitation and ate with them, looking most incongruous in the dining hall in his ragged clothes, about which he seemed not the slightest bit self-conscious.

"I'll be leaving in the morning," the old swordsmith announced when they had eaten their fill. "But I shall make regular visits, as a good godfather is supposed to be free to do, instead of being driven off with swords and poisonous whips and barred from seeing his younger godchild. In the meantime, work with your swords, both of you, not against them."

Inuyasha promised to be up to see him off, then rose from his seat and took his leave, bowing to both Totosai and Sesshomaru before going back upstairs to his room.

Totosai again declined indoor accommodation for the night, so Sesshomaru walked his godfather out to Bokusen'o's forest patch. Halfway there, when they were in the middle of a field with no one nearby, Totosai said to his royal godson: "Sesshomaru, if you hurt that boy again, I will break your head. Even if you manage to dodge my blows, I promise that you will never be happy if you cause him any more pain."

"That sounds like a curse," the demon lord remarked calmly.

"Perhaps it is. But it may be a blessing too, if you heed the warning. Your father designed the swords not only to suit himself, but to match your souls. The two swords were once one fang. Destroy your brother, and you will destroy yourself. But love him, and you will grow stronger."

"I have no intention of hurting Inuyasha again," Sesshomaru stated. "But I do not think he will make it easy for me to do right by him."

"You didn't make it easy for him to survive before. You'll pay for that in spadefuls of patience and understanding, neither of which have ever been your strong points."

"I assure you that repayment has already begun."

"You haven't filled up so much as a tenth of that gaping hole yet."

"You forget that Father left a gaping hole in my heart too."

"Such a fool you are – you dug the hole there yourself by refusing to look past your father's outward manner through to the love he had for you inside. I'm not saying he wasn't to blame too, but you didn't have to dig quite so deep, did you? You're like your mother, you are, taking everything to heart and letting things fester. At least _she_ learnt to let things go as she grew older – you haven't mastered the art of that yet! But you'll heal yourself as you heal your little brother. You had better, because enough wounds have been inflicted in this family. Honour your father's sword, and don't insult it by pairing it with that abomination of Kaijinbo's."

Sesshomaru nodded, knowing that while he now had his two godfathers' guidance once more, he was the one who would have to do the work and walk the path they were helping him to map out.

The demon lord returned to the castle after leaving Totosai in Bokusen'o's company. He went to the small training room in which his own battle armour was kept, and there he hung up on the wall the sword Kaijinbo had forged, Tokijin, chaining it to its holder and placing a barrier spell around it so the servants would not accidentally touch it while cleaning the room, for the sword was powerful and dangerous.

From his personal armoury, he selected a simple but well-crafted metal sword with no magic in it, which he could use as an offensive weapon in an emergency, and sheathed that in his sash beside his father's Tenseiga.

Then he went to Inuyasha's room and knocked on the door before turning the handle and entering.

"Are you about to go to bed?" Sesshomaru asked, trying not to stare too hard at his brother, who was crouched on the carpet for some reason, looking invitingly tousle-haired and extremely undressable in a light, thin robe woven from a soft, white fabric.

"No, I'm wide awake. I was just writing another letter to Kikyo and Kaede when the wind blew the sheet under the bed."

"If you're not about to sleep yet, may I show you something?" Sesshomaru asked.

"Sure. What is it?"

The demon lord latched Inyuasha's bedroom door, then said: "Come here," as he moved towards the wall in which Inuyasha's bathroom door was set.

Puzzled, Inuyasha got up and padded along barefooted behind his brother, who was moving towards the wall.

Lowering his voice, Sesshomaru said: "Put your hand here – exactly here, on this stone, and let the stone feel that you are of our father's blood. When you sense that it has responded to you and that it acknowledges you, push the stone into the wall, firmly but steadily."

Inuyasha, thoroughly intrigued by now, did as instructed. To his amazement, the stone glided into the wall with very little resistance, and something clicked softly within the thickness of the stone structure.

"It works through an ancient spell created by our grandfather. It obeys those of our blood, provided that we know how to use the spell. To draw the stone back towards the surface of the wall and re-seal the door, position your hand over the gap and call the stone back with your mind. I will show you how that is done later."

"Door?" Inuyasha asked in a whisper. "This opens a door?"

"Yes. Look."

Sesshomaru pushed open the stone doorway to the secret passage, stepped inside, and beckoned Inuyasha to follow. The stunned half-demon prince entered the passage after him, and walked through it until Sesshomaru opened the door at its other end, and they emerged in the demon lord's bedroom.

Sesshomaru held a finger to his lips to tell Inuyasha that he should remain silent, as he did not want the guards outside to hear any voices within when no one was supposed to be in this room. Although the doors were very thick and would keep even fairly loud sounds from reaching the ears of the guards outside, Sesshomaru knew there was a chance that Inuyasha might get angry enough to start bellowing at the top of his voice, and _that_ would not go unheard.

The half-demon remained silent, so Sesshomaru closed the door on his side and led him back down the passage to where they had begun. He showed him how to draw the locking-stone back to be flush with the wall, and how that triggered the stone door to move back into place and merge flawlessly again with the rest of the stone it was set in. Everything operated almost soundlessly. If someone did not know the passage was there, they would never pay any attention to those soft noises, for they would think them sounds from other parts of the castle, carried through the stone.

Inuyasha stared at Sesshomaru, not speaking for some time, before asking in a voice that was still hushed: "What the hell was that? How long has that passage been there?"

"It has been there since the castle was built. Our grandfather included the design of such passages in certain parts of the castle, intending them to be used as hiding places, or perhaps as escape routes for the children of the family in an emergency, although our family has long been powerful enough not to require their use."

"And one of those passages lies between your bedroom and mine?" Inuyasha asked in a wary tone that threatened to turn fierce.

"Yes. You have every right to be angry that I did not tell you about it before. I confess that I used to use the passage to look at you while you slept by night, especially when you were a child. But I give you my word that I shall never open your side of the door again without your express permission. There's no need to pile cupboards and cabinets in front of it. I will _never_ open it again if you do not say specifically that I can, do you understand? But I am giving _you_ permission to come through to my room whenever you need to or want to, for any reason. I will not give myself that permission to do the same to you. I hope you will not stay angry with me for long."

The secret passage and Sesshomaru's former use of it made up yet another phantom from the past that the demon lord knew could threaten all that he was trying to build with Inuyasha. But better out than in, Totosai had said, and Sesshomaru had no intention of allowing Inuyasha to find out about the hidden doors later and feel a hundred times more betrayed than he would if he confessed to him now.

Inuyasha glared at Sesshomaru in silence before asking grimly: "You used to watch me in secret while I slept?"

"Yes I did. I'm sorry. I won't do that again."

A longer silence followed, broken at last by this blunt statement from the prince, accompanied by blazing golden eyes: "You are one seriously screwed-up bastard, you know that, Sesshomaru?"

The demon lord felt less inclined to agree immediately with that fierce statement, for letting go of his old arrogance and selfish behaviour was not a quick or easy process, and it had not been long since he had embarked on what looked to be a long and humbling road for him.

"I wish I were less of a disappointment to you as an elder brother and king," he responded at last. "I have only just begun to behave as my godfathers have long suggested that I should, and as I believe you would want me to. I ask for your patience, and I hope with all my being that this will not drive you away from me. I hope you will find some reason to come back to me."

"Come back to you?" Inuyasha asked. "What do you mean? I'm stuck here, aren't I?"

What Sesshomaru had to say next cost him greater effort, and the unpleasant tingle of fear that every powerful being feels when he voluntarily deprives himself of the control of something he desires. But the demon lord had never lacked the courage to do what was unpleasant, so he opened his mouth and said to Inuyasha: "Wouldn't you like to visit your friends in the village?"


	22. Letting Go

Inuyasha looked over the wares of the three peddlers that Sesshomaru had summoned from the nearby town to the castle.

They were sellers of children's toys, offering a variety of items from windmill fans and colourful glass marbles to paper kites, simple wooden and cloth animal figurines, and elaborately dressed human and demon dolls with painted porcelain faces and moving parts.

The prince made his selection. He chose mostly the simpler toys, but he bought a large enough quantity of them to make all the sellers very happy. He paid them himself from the allowance he had just drawn from the treasury that morning.

Then he looked up at Sesshomaru and smiled, and the demon lord basked in his brother's pleasure, feeling that he had just been given a gift of great value.

…

Inuyasha had not dared to believe that Sesshomaru meant it when he told him last night that he would allow him to visit his friends in the village. But it was true, it was happening. He held his delight in as best he could, afraid that if he let all his joy out, the gods would envy his happiness and take it away from him.

They had seen Totosai off in the morning, then as the fire demon vanished into the clouds on his flying cow, Sesshomaru had turned to Inuyasha and asked him if he would like to purchase some toys for the children of the village. When he had answered eagerly that yes, he would like that very much, the demon lord sent at once for the operators of the three biggest children's toy stalls in the town two miles away, commanding them to come and display their wares at the castle gates.

It was primarily a demon town, but close enough to several human villages to do trade with them. A small number of the stallholders and peddlers in the town were human, and even a few of the demon businesses produced and sold goods that would also appeal to humans. Inuyasha thus had no difficulty finding toys that the village children would love.

He spent the rest of the day in quiet excitement, first surprising the chefs and other kitchen staff by showing up in person at their working area, then pleasing them greatly by asking politely if they could prepare a few boxes of sweets that human children could safely eat.

Natsumi's lover, Kazuki, delighted Inuyasha by promising that he would personally select safe ingredients like dates, cane sugar and the sweetest wolfberries that the dessert chef would be able to cook into caramelised sweets. They would deliver them to Inuyasha by the end of the day, properly wrapped and boxed.

Then he had gone back to his room, dragging Jaken along with him and barely paying attention to his already-attenuated lesson as he dug up a stack of colourful writing paper from a cabinet, a bunch of writing brushes and ink sticks from a drawer, and tried repeatedly to fold them all up nicely into a wrapping cloth to give to Kikyo and Kaede, for the priestesses conducted writing and reading lessons for the village children daily, and often ran out of stationery.

In the end, Jaken gave up trying to teach and joined his pupil instead in selecting the stationery that would be appropriate for giving away, and helping him to wrap it up presentably.

Later, Natsumi came by to help him separate the toys and stationery into various carefully wrapped bundles so that they would not be damaged on the way to the village.

Kazuki personally delivered the boxes of sweets in the evening, and Inuyasha's eyes widened as he opened one of the boxes to find rows and layers of beautifully golden, sticky sweets, the softly caramelised sugar holding generous quantities of diced dates, chopped walnuts, whole wolfberries and candied fruit. Each sweet was individually wrapped in a sheer sliver of muslin, then carefully laid beside its neighbours in stiff paper boxes covered with decorative cloth.

"You must taste them, Your Highness," Kazuki said. "I did, and they are delicious. There are more in the kitchen, if Your Highness requires a larger quantity. They've been carefully cooked and shaped, and will keep for a long time even if the weather is hot."

"This is already more than I expected!" Inuyasha said, amazed. "The children will be eating these for days!"

He unwrapped one of the sweets and popped it into his mouth, and Kazuki and Natsumi could tell from the way his eyes opened even wider that he was more than pleased with the dessert chef's skills.

…

The next morning, one day after Totosai's departure, it was Inuyasha's turn to leave. The prince stood before his brother in his red fire rat robe, which he had insisted on wearing because everything else he had in his wardrobe would be much too grand for the village, and he did not want his friends to think that he was putting on airs.

Sesshomaru had come to his bedroom after breakfast to see if he was all set to leave, and found that Inuyasha was more than ready.

"It's not like I have a lot of stuff to pack," the half-demon said, strapping Tetsusaiga to his sash. "I'm only going for two days, and Natsumi's already seen to it that all the toys, sweets and stationery are safely strapped to the dragons' saddlebags. I'm also taking along a bit of money that I can maybe slip to Kikyo in private, but that's all – I don't want it to look like I'm getting too grand for them or anything."

"Of course."

"It's only two days," Inuyasha repeated, knowing by instinct that he needed to console Sesshomaru without doing so too overtly, for the proud demon lord was striving not to show his reluctance to let him go, as he did not wish to dampen his brother's excitement at the prospect of seeing his friends again.

"You will be very well protected," Sesshomaru said, intending his words to reassure Inuyasha that he would be safe, but feeling after he had spoken it that the statement was really meant to reassure himself.

"I know. Thank you," Inuyasha replied.

The demon lord had assigned three of his best guards, and the messenger Yuno, to escort the prince to the village. They were to protect him from all danger on the way there, and also keep the entire village safe while he was staying in it. He had tasked Jaken with the role of chaperone, as it was not considered proper for a prince of Inuyasha's age to leave his home without an official guardian or chaperone accompanying him. It had been arranged that Sesshomaru himself would go to the village in two days' time to bring Inuyasha home safely.

Sesshomaru had explained the arrangement last night, when he had said to his brother: "I would very much like to go with you, but I have a full-day meeting with my ministers the day after tomorrow that cannot be put off. Besides, my presence would make your friends uncomfortable, so it is a good thing for me not to be there throughout your stay. However, I shall set off first thing in the morning after the meeting, so that I can bring you home myself, without having to impose myself on the villagers for long."

"I won't run away, you know," Inuyasha had answered quietly.

Pausing for a moment after hearing that statement from the half-demon, Sesshomaru had nodded thoughtfully to himself, but told his brother: "You have every reason to run away from me, after all the unhappiness I caused you. But I am not going to the village to stop you from doing that. You could easily leave at any time during your visit. I simply hope that you will choose not to run away – not because of my foolish threat against your friends – but, I hope, because you want to come back. I would miss you if you never came home again."

A certain note in Sesshomaru's voice had exposed the undercurrent of emotion racing beneath the calm words, and Inuyasha had felt awkwardly helpless, not knowing how to deal with this side of his brother that he had never imagined existed. At the time, he had just bowed and said "thank you" a little formally, and Sesshomaru had left him to rest for the night.

Now, as he stood before him again in the morning, Inuyasha felt the awkwardness return. The lingering traces of his years of resentment, and the fresh upset from learning of the secret passage, egged him to toy with the idea of never returning to the castle. He imagined running off while letting Sesshomaru know in no uncertain terms that he never wanted to see his face again. But in that tiny internal battle, his sympathy for Sesshomaru, and his gratitude to him for his recent kindness, overcame the traces of his old hostility. At the same time, that odd feeling of having some strange power over his brother touched his feelings of compassion more than those of his resentment.

So on a pure impulse, he stepped up to the demon lord, raised himself just a little on his toes – for at his age he was still a few inches shorter than his brother – and gave Sesshomaru a kiss on the cheek, discovering as he did so that Sesshomaru smelt unexpectedly appealing.

"Thank you for letting me visit my friends," he whispered into his ear, before coming down from tiptoe and slipping his arms around him so he could rest his head against his chest in the manner of a child giving his father a hug. "You will see me at the village in two days – it won't be any time at all."

Sesshomaru lowered his head, inhaled the scent of the half-demon deeply, and ran his hand down the length of Inuyasha's silver hair. Then he gathered up his resolve, and let him go.

The demon lord walked his brother out to the field where his escorts awaited him. Inuyasha was to ride behind Yuno on his dragon, and they were to fly behind another dragon that would be ridden by a guard and Jaken. The other two guards, on flying steeds, would bring up the rear. Another dragon-mounted messenger accompanied them – he was to stay in the village for one night, then return the next morning to report to Sesshomaru that the prince was safe and well.

They expected to reach the village by noon, for it was a clear day, and a tail wind would be blowing.

Inuyasha said goodbye to Natsumi, who had remained out in the field to bid him farewell. He jumped lightly onto the dragon behind Yuno and settled down on the great beast's back as Sesshomaru gave final instructions to the three guards. Inuyasha had to hide an embarrassed smile as his sharp ears picked up the demon lord's warning and implicit threat that if anything bad happened to the prince, they would no longer find their lives worth living. The devoted Jaken, and Yuno, Sesshomaru's most trusted messenger, needed no reminders.

In moments that passed too swiftly, they took their leave, their mounts took to the air, and Inuyasha was soon lost to Sesshomaru's sight.

…

That day was a long one for the demon lord. Although his routine meant that he usually saw little of Inuyasha between breakfast and dinner in any case, the passing hours felt different, heavy with the knowledge that the boy was not within the castle grounds.

As noon came and went, he knew that he must have reached the village, and would be greeting all his friends by this time, telling them what he could safely tell of his life in the castle without revealing too much that would upset them or embarrass him. He would undoubtedly be mobbed by the little ones the second he pulled the toys and goodies out, and perhaps the children would trample all over Jaken as they rushed towards Inuyasha.

Sesshomaru forced himself to sleep that night even though he did not require the rest, in order that the hours would pass more quickly for him. When he arose, he allowed his three room attendants to see to all his morning bathroom requirements and to dress him formally for the meeting with his ministers.

It was an important gathering, one that was held twice a year for Sesshomaru to hear the half-yearly reports and petitions from all quarters of his kingdom; ensure that his instructions from six months ago had been carried out or to find out why they could not be properly implemented; to learn by allowing the ministers themselves to debate current policies and laws with one another whether anything could be improved; and also to discover by listening to the subtle cross-questioning among the various parties if anyone was not doing their jobs as they should.

He held smaller meetings on a more regular basis with different ministers, or groups of ministers and generals, but this was one of the gatherings that saw all the key personnel in his kingdom in attendance. It was essential for maintaining the smooth running of his lands, to remind all his people that he was very much in power and control, and to nip problems in the bud. He would have liked to have Inuyasha sit in on this session, but decided that it was a little too early for the boy to attend these large gatherings. It was therefore a good time for him to see his friends and for Sesshomaru to learn not to hold him so tightly that it would only suffocate Inuyasha.

Nonetheless, there were polite and interested inquiries from various ministers about the prince, whose return to the castle they had all heard about, but whom they had not as yet seen.

"My lord, we are delighted to hear that His Highness has returned home, and we hope that we will have the privilege of meeting him at these gatherings in future," the Minister for War and the Maintenance of Peace said, joined by others. This Minister for War (and Peace), Atsushi, was an old dog demon who had been one of the few to tell Sesshomaru what he thought of his casually letting his brother and stepmother leave the castle to live with her human relations.

"My lord," he had said bravely one hundred and ninety years ago, when he had learnt that the boy and his mother were already gone. "This would break your father's heart were he still here to see it."

Sesshomaru had angrily banished him from the castle for many months, but eventually readmitted him when enough time had passed for his anger to wane, and for his practical good sense to remind him that Minister Atsushi had never been anything but loyal to his family, had fought courageously beside him when the castle was attacked by his father's enemies, and was one of the most efficient demon chieftains he had ever worked with.

"My brother has returned home," Sesshomaru said now, more specifically to the Minister of War than the others. "But he is paying a visit to some of his friends at present, chaperoned by his tutor. He is still little more than a child. However, I shall ask him to attend these and other meetings in time to come. I have no doubt that he will learn much from all of you."

They got down to business then, and the rest of the day passed in matters that would have largely been dull enough to put the king to sleep had he been inclined to doze off. But like his father, he had never been known to fall asleep in front of his ministers. Besides, dull reports and presentations were perhaps a good sign that all was well in his kingdom.

Only the border general from the south had an interesting report about how Naraku's lands to the southeast were crawling with demon bandits that the spider lord had recently permitted to move freely through his territories. The bandits apparently worked for him, and were a useful instrument for suppressing dissent among his own people. They targeted towns and villages that harboured thoughts of rebellion against the spider lord, and left alone those that did his bidding. The trouble now was that some of the bandit gangs had too few villages to plunder, and often tried to slip north into Sesshomaru's lands, or into the lands belonging to the demon birds, whose kingdom adjoined theirs.

Border scuffles between the demon birds and the spider bandits were frequent, while Sesshomaru's own borders had seen only three attempts by the bandits to cross them so far, possibly because their territories were more consistently patrolled. However, the signs were that these attempts would only grow in frequency over time.

"We have already increased patrols at the southern border, my lord," the general reported. "We wiped out the three groups that tried to attack our border guards and killed their leaders, but new bandits seem to appear weekly, and they seem increasingly desperate for food and money. They do not appear to have any difficulty wandering freely into the neutral wilderness between Your Majesty's lands and Lord Naraku's territory – Naraku's own border guards do not seem to be doing their jobs."

"Perhaps they _are_ doing their jobs, in Naraku's opinion," the Minister for War suggested.

Sesshomaru asked the general for further details and considered the situation carefully before making his decision: "I authorise an increase in the number of troops guarding the southern border. We have no trouble with the bears in the north at present, and our defences there would be adequate even with fewer soldiers, since we have a natural warning system in the form of the herds of deer populating the neutral zone in the north. As those creatures take fright at everything, no movements from the bear armies will be possible without setting off a mass stampede. So take two hundred soldiers from the north and move them to the south for at least the next three months. In the meantime, I shall write to Naraku and remind him that if he does not keep his own lands under proper control, others will be only too happy to do it for him."

Sesshomaru was thinking mainly of Queen Abi of the demon birds, who among the rulers in this part of the world was the one who had never bothered to make any secret of her dislike for Naraku, or of her distrust of him, although she maintained polite relations with his princedom for the sake of keeping the peace between neighbours. If she ever had an opportunity to sink her fangs and talons into the spider lord, however, she would undoubtedly do so with the greatest satisfaction.

Sesshomaru had gathered that Queen Abi's deep hatred for Naraku stemmed from the fact that she believed the spider lord harboured something of the supposedly deceased Onigumo within his soul by means of his dark magic. She had never forgiven Onigumo for once trying to trick her mother into doing his dirty work for him. It was a dishonourable act, and Queen Abi hated dishonourable conduct. In contrast, she and Sesshomaru treated each other with mutual respect even though his father had killed her mother in the great battle, because she had accepted that it was her mother who had behaved dishonourably there by joining forces with others to attack a solitary demon who was trying to defend his mate and unborn child.

In the course of the meeting, the messenger who had accompanied Inuyasha to the village requested admission and reported quietly to Sesshomaru that all was well, the prince had spent a good day and a safe night among his friends, and was as happy as he could be. Sesshomaru's heart had both lightened to hear that his brother was safe, and grown just a shade heavier to learn that he was so happy away from him.

When the long event finally concluded in the evening, Sesshomaru invited all the ministers and their staff to a feast, as was his custom. The demon lord ate well, and conversed with those closest to him, as well as to a few he wanted to learn more about, before retiring.

The ministers whose homes were near the castle usually chose to return to their own abodes after dinner, while the border generals and others who were based further away normally accepted accommodation in the castle's spacious guest wing, or in the nearby homes of ministers they were on friendly terms with.

Sesshomaru waited until his own staff had shown the departing guests out, seen to the guests who were staying, and returned to report to him that everyone had settled down for the night. Only then did Sesshomaru allow his attendants to prepare his bath and help him out of his formal attire.

He lay back in his hot bath water and discovered that after a full day of discussions and formal entertainment, his muscles were tense. The flesh on his left arm had healed smoothly, but the soreness within remained. He said nothing, but the attentive Isshin noticed, and offered to call for the tiger demon who numbered among his bath attendants, and who knew best how to massage him. Sesshomaru nodded, but stated that he wanted to finish soaking in the bath first.

When he had relaxed his mind and body enough in the heat of the bath, the tiger demon was sent for. The lad arrived promptly, making a strikingly exotic sight with his blue eyes and his snow-white, softly grey-striped hair. Sesshomaru, however, was not interested in anything other than his hands tonight, even though this lad had pleasured him often enough during his baths.

The other attendants left, and Sesshomaru lay on the wide bench in the bathroom to let the tiger demon knead every kink out of his joints and every stiff spot out of his flesh and muscles. At the point where the young demon normally went on to please his lord in other ways besides helping him to relax, Sesshomaru caught his breath sharply to feel those skilled hands trailing seductively against his crotch as a precursor to what was to come, and for a second it seemed so easy to go with the familiar old pattern and let himself be fully ministered to.

But no. No more.

Sesshomaru's golden eyes opened and locked on to those blue eyes as his hand caught the tiger demon's wrist and stopped him. The demon lord shook his head and sat up.

"Thank you," he said, surprising the servant, who had never, as far as he recalled, been thanked for _not_ doing what he thought of as his duty. "That will do for tonight."

He dismissed him, wrapped himself in a warm robe, and sat up on the bench in the bathroom for some time, appreciating the heat from the steam that rose off the surface of the water. He wondered how Inuyasha was getting on. The sharp pain that had needled his heart on the boy's first night back in the castle had not troubled him for a few days now, but it seemed to have been replaced by the ache of longing, for he missed his brother.

What was the meaning of this dull, aching pain? Was it the pull of physical desire? The growth of affection? The strain of holding back his old instincts which tugged against their new leash like untamed dragons? How much longer could he keep his hands off Inuyasha? Supposing he did succeed in winning the boy over, would that one boy ever be enough for him, or would he regress and make Inuyasha only the first and most important among many?

But the more immediate question he faced was that of what he would do if Inuyasha was not at the village when he went there to collect him.

Could he let him go?


	23. Among Friends

Inuyasha spent almost the whole of his first day back in the village going around the entire community, greeting his friends, meeting the new baby of the woman who always gave him mushrooms to eat, and playing with the children who had missed their "dog monster" – but were delighted enough with the treats and toys to obey him when he told them with mock-sternness that they were not to pull his ears. Then he had eaten a communal meal with the village elders and their families in the evening. Only after that was he finally able to sit down under the great tree for a quiet talk with Kikyo and Kaede, as the sun began to sink.

Jaken, Yuno and the demon guards were being entertained by the headman, who was treating them to meat and drinks and getting pointers from them about how to defend the village better against human-eating demon beasts.

Carefully watched over by one of the guards, the children were only just growing brave enough to approach the demons' dragon mounts and fiery flying steeds. One small boy finally patted the muzzle of a dragon, which nudged him gently and made him fall back onto the ground, causing all the other children to laugh.

Kikyo glanced at the giggling children, then turned back to Inuyasha and her sister, with whom she sat under the tree, alone together at last.

"You're not telling me everything," Kikyo said. She sounded concerned as she put her fine-boned, lightly wrinkled hand over the half-demon's clawed fingers.

"When has he ever told us _everything_?" Kaede muttered, putting her own considerably plumper hands to work on pouring out some tea from a pot she had carried out of the hut to the tree. Earlier, she had confiscated several of the sweet boxes and told the village headman to lock them up in one of his chests to be rationed out later, to prevent the children from gorging themselves silly on the goodies without restraint.

"We all need to keep some things to ourselves," Inuyasha said. "But I promise you that Sesshomaru is much nicer to me now. I'll admit that it wasn't easy for the first few days, but he's been kind since then, and I don't think he'll do anything to me that I don't want him to – unless what I don't want happens to be good for me."

"Are you sure?" Kikyo asked, searching the half-demon's golden eyes with her own dark pair, which were still clear and sparkling with inner fire. But her thin face looked so pale and translucent then, and Inuyasha wondered how someone so physically delicate could also be so spiritually strong.

"I'm sure," Inuyasha told her, leaning back against the trunk of the enormous tree. As his head touched the bark, he suddenly remembered Bokusen'o's leaf, which he had brought with him. Despite its separation from Bokusen'o for several days now, the leaf remained green and glossy, and Inuyasha wanted to show it to the great tree sacred to the village.

So he took it out, said "Excuse me for a moment" to the two priestesses, and leaped into the upper branches of the tree, where he stood for a while and pressed the leaf against the trunk. "Feel that?" he asked the tree. "This leaf was given to me by a tree demon, Bokusen'o. I don't think you're a tree demon as you've never popped a face out of your trunk at me, but sometimes you speak quietly and wordlessly to me, so maybe you know about tree demons too."

The wordless message that he heard from the great tree spoke of interest, and a sense of peace that Inuyasha was well and alive, so the half-demon patted the tree, returned to ground and continued his conversation with the sisters while leaning back against the trunk and reaching back to stroke the bark every now and again.

"You really do look very well," Kaede said appraisingly, looking him up and down as she handed him a cup of tea. "He's feeding you properly, at any rate."

"Did you have any trouble on the night of the new moon?" Kikyo asked in a softer voice. She and Kaede were the only two people in the village who knew his secret, and they helped him keep it secret by sheltering him indoors in their hut on those nights, behind screens and under blankets, with the emergency escape route of a window near him.

"Well… a little," Inuyasha admitted. "But Sesshomaru kept me safe. He knows too. He's always known, only he never told me that."

"He doesn't object to your human form?"

Inuyasha shook his head. "I thought he would mind. But apparently he doesn't."

"Perhaps the more important question is: do _you_ mind being with him?" Kikyo asked. "Are you happy?"

"Keh," Inuyasha muttered awkwardly. "Happy? I'm not that ambitious. I was happy enough here, and I suppose I could be happy enough there. I don't know. I'm really still feeling my way with Sesshomaru, and it's funny, but I think it's the same for him."

"Hasn't he given you any new clothes?" Kaede asked curiously, looking pointedly at his fire rat robe, which she had always known him to wear.

"Haven't you anything _better_ to ask me?" Inuyasha shot back in reply, only to meet Kaede's famously stubborn face, which she put on whenever she was determined to find something out.

"It's a perfectly reasonable question!" the younger of the two sisters insisted. "Great demon lord with all the wealth in the world, and his little brother going about in the same old garb as he's worn since I first set eyes on his sorry, skinny self wandering through the forest fifty years ago."

"It's a perfectly good robe!" Inuyasha snapped. "Sure looks cleaner than yours!"

"That's because I spend half my days dragging my old bones through the forest looking for herbs, and digging trenches in the vegetable gardens that are deep enough to bury a cat in!" Kaede fired back.

Kikyo sighed and stepped in with a few well-placed, gentle words: "Kaede is only concerned about whether your brother is really being good to you, if he's not even giving you new clothes to wear."

Inuyasha reluctantly began to see the wisdom of Sesshomaru's insisting on his changing into clothing proper to a prince when he had first returned to the castle, because if this was how his village friends saw it, then he could only imagine what would have gone through the minds of the castle's denizens if he had wandered the grounds in the same robe every single day.

"He's treating me fine," the half-demon said at last. "He's given me a bloody wardrobe full of fancy clothes. I didn't want to wear any of them here because I didn't want you to think that I'd grown too self-important for you. I'm your friend and I always will be, no matter where I am, how I dress, or how long I live."

"Of course. How shallow of us," Kikyo said with an arch smile, shooting her sister a warning look.

"So how have you both been, really?" Inuyasha asked. "Any health problems?"

He found himself increasingly concerned about Kikyo as she aged, for despite her fighting ability and her spiritual powers, she had always been fragile. Kaede, who was ten years younger and a good deal more sturdily built than her sister, had far fewer health concerns.

"We've been very well," Kikyo assured him, but he could see the dark circles under her eyes, and the grey shooting heavily through her hair, and he could not help but fear that she would not see many more years to come. Her old beauty could still be seen in the fine structure of her features, but it was disappearing year by year under creasing skin and softening flesh.

"You'd better be well, and _stay_ well," he said gruffly, to conceal his fears, which he knew were real but could not help considering childish. "Who's going to take over as priestesses if you two pop off?"

"Our grand-niece is coming along very well," Kikyo said with a fond smile.

"Little Kagome?" Inuyasha laughed. "The clumsy child who's all legs?"

"Yes," Kikyo chuckled. "She may be young and silly, always tripping over everything, but she has a good heart, and more power in her little finger than most priestesses all over the country. Although I will allow myself to be smug enough to say that she hasn't as much controlled power as I did at her age."

"Kagome grabbed more sweets from me this afternoon than any of the other children did – but she also gave more of them away to the smaller ones than any of the others," Inuyasha recalled.

"That's how she is. Generous and kind, even if she seems brash and impulsive to begin with," Kaede said. "Well, she's only five years old. She'll have plenty of time to refine her personality and grow into a priestess this village can respect."

"I should be around long enough to see that she turns out well," Inuyasha said. "But I want you two to be around as long as you can. I think you're my only real friends in the whole world."

"Come now, you must have made some friends since you went to the castle," Kikyo said gently. "That kappa tutor of yours, for one, looks very protective of you, and very fond of you."

"Jaken-sensei is all right," Inuyasha conceded. "There's a racoon demon girl who's very kind, and most of the servants and staff have been good to me, really." He chose not to mention Mamoru.

"You haven't been there for long. There's so much more time for you to make more friends."

"I suppose. We'll find out sooner or later. But for now, don't you go dying on me."

"I'm not planning to go to my grave yet," Kaede said stoutly. "I'm perfectly ready to give my life for a worthy cause, but if you think I'm going to just turn my face to the wall and die, think again."

"Neither am I planning to die yet, although such things are not usually within our control," Kikyo said firmly, then stifled a yawn.

"It's late," Inuyasha said in surprise at how quickly the time had passed, when he realised that he could see the stars in the sky. "You should both be in bed. I'll spend the night indoors with you, okay?"

"We wouldn't have it any other way," Kikyo replied, as they said goodnight to the great tree and headed for the hut.

The demon guards, Yuno and Jaken were resting under a pine tree, having declined to spend the night inside any of the huts. Although they were accustomed to their castle accommodation, they were animal demons and were thus as comfortable outdoors as in. Inuyasha sat with them for a while, then went to the priestesses' hut.

The sisters had always slept with their hut door wide open whenever Inuyasha was staying with them, and did not sleep behind screens when Inuyasha was indoors. So even when they were young women, there had never been any questions asked about how they could allow a male half-demon to spend some nights inside their home. Anyone could step in and see at any time that nothing improper was going on in there. On those nights that Inuyasha was human and needed to be hidden, Kikyo and Kaede were always in view, and would give out that Inuyasha was away in the forest, or affected by some mild half-demon ailment that spiritually weak humans would do well to keep away from.

Now that they were old, they had become grandmotherly figures whose considerable spiritual powers were further proof that they had never done anything that priestesses should not do with men. And Inuyasha was still the youth they had always championed, so there was no question that if he was to sleep in a hut, that it would be their hut.

He had spent many nights in here, propped up against the door frame or sometimes lying down on a rough mat in the doorway, like a guard dog. He did that again now, and found that although it was nothing like his comfortable bed in the castle, it was a welcoming spot, and a familiar place to rest. He slept very well through that night, knowing not only that he was among friends, but also being watched over protectively from a little distance by the guards, Yuno and Jaken, who kept him in their sight at all times without ever smothering him with their attention.

…

Inuyasha did not want to try giving Kikyo the money yet, because he had a feeling she would refuse it and try to push it back to him. So even throughout most of the next day, when he busied himself helping the villagers with their heavy lifting and the difficult chores that would have taken ten men to handle, he kept the money hidden inside his robes and said nothing about it to her or her sister.

Throughout the fifty years that Inuyasha had lived in the village, he had never told anyone other than the two priestesses that he was Sesshomaru's half-brother. Everyone else – from the time they had accepted him as one of their own – had thought he was just a tree-loving half-dog-demon born to parents of ordinary status, and had been astonished to discover that he was really a prince when their demon king, Sesshomaru, arrived to claim him.

During the first few moments of his visit to the village, most of the adult villagers had been unsure about how to behave towards him. Should they treat him like royalty now? Should they serve him hand and foot? Were they supposed to be more polite to him than rough folk like themselves knew how to be?

But the children had immediately broken the ice by tearing free from their parents' cautiously restraining hands and pouncing on the half-demon the second he waved the bags of toys and sweets at them, and everyone had seen at once that he was still the same Inuyasha who had lived among them for so long.

By the morning of the second day, Inuyasha had no trouble convincing his old friends that it would be fine for him to roll up his sleeves and get down to work as he always had. He had been invaluable to the village during his fifty years there, hauling heavy items around with the greatest ease, chopping up more firewood in half-an-hour than even an entire group of men would have been able to do in twice that amount of time, and digging holes for the planting of new trees for shade, and to replace those that they cut down.

Because of Inuyasha's sensitivity to the rhythms of nature and his affinity for trees, he had also been very important to the village in terms of his ability to tell which trees could be safely cut down for wood without offending the tree that was sacred to the gods, and which should be left alone. Inuyasha and the villagers always visited the great tree before every wood and plant-gathering expedition to the forest, to seek its blessing and permission to reap the materials they required for their survival.

When Inuyasha and the priestesses received the great tree's approval, the half-demon would lead the villagers out into the forest, where he would be able to tell which trees were spiritually "dead" and ready to be felled, and which were still "speaking", and must be left unharmed. Sometimes, even a "speaking" tree would indicate to Inuyasha that it was willing to give up a few of its overgrown branches, and the half-demon would thank the tree and direct the villagers to take the branches that the tree no longer required.

Kikyo and Kaede were also sensitive to the spiritual life within the living things around them, so in Inuyasha's absence, they had been able to communicate with the great tree and direct the villagers well enough. However, Inuyasha was better at it than they were, and quicker to hear the whispers or detect the deaths of the old trees.

"You have to learn this too," Inuyasha said to Kagome, the gangly little grand-niece of his two friends. "Sometimes it helps to close your eyes and put your hands to the bark, and listen to the tree – you can hear and sense if it is alive or dead. By 'dead', we do not mean that the wood is rotten and useless, but that the tree is spiritually dead. A dead tree may have the best wood, while a rotting tree may still have a spirit dwelling in it, do you understand?"

"Yes, Inuyasha," Kagome said, putting her palms to one of the trees in the forest as he did, and trying to detect spiritual viability within it. But soon she looked up hopefully at the half-demon and asked: "Can I touch your ears again, please?"

Inuyasha said no, and the girl pouted a little. But she continued to work hard, and when he found that she was "hearing" the same messages as he was from ten trees in a row, he was pleased with her progress, and stooped down to let her put her hands to his furry ears.

The child was thrilled. After making a promise that she would not pull or pinch the triangular flaps, she carefully reached out and stroked his ears, grinning to feel their softness at the tips, and the more cartilaginous firmness at the base.

"Thank you, Inuyasha!" she laughed, then cheekily pulled hard on both his sidelocks and ran off to her grand-aunts for protection as he gave a mock roar and chased after her.

By the end of the second day, Inuyasha, as well as the three demon guards and Yuno, had done more work in the village than the humans could have managed in a month. Huts were repaired, damaged farm tools fixed and replaced, fields tilled to be ready for the latter half of spring, rice barrels stacked up in the shed, bags full of rabbits caught and housed in hutches for the meat they could supply, and the firewood stores more than fully replenished.

Only Jaken had not done any menial work, for he was a little too small to be useful. Besides, he was already fully occupied teaching the older village children to memorise and write a poem filled with difficult words and complex characters – it had been the only way for him to stop those mischievous creatures from playing exhausting games with him that all seemed to end with his dignity less than intact.

"Maybe this will last you until my next visit!" Inuyasha declared with satisfaction as he brushed the dirt off his hands, when the villagers finally convinced him to sit down and rest by telling him that they did not want Lord Sesshomaru to think that they were mistreating his brother.

The remainder of the day went well, and peacefully for Jaken, as Inuyasha admitted him into his private conversation with the priestesses for an hour or so until Jaken himself decided that he had intruded upon them long enough and returned to rest under the trees with the other demons.

As Inuyasha lay down to rest in the doorway of the priestesses' hut again that night, he felt a tremendous sense of contentment to know that he had been of use to the village, and that his efforts were genuinely appreciated. For fifty years, although he had been a mere pup in demon terms, to the human villagers, he was a powerful half-demon they looked up to for his strength and courage. Yet, among the castle's community of demons, most of whom were at least several hundred years older than himself, he was a mere child, a puppy to be protected or guided – or abused, as the case might be.

It felt so much better to be needed.

He decided that if he returned to the castle, he would insist that Sesshomaru give him some proper work to do, so that he would be truly useful.

At the very moment that he thought of Sesshomaru, he discovered to his surprise that he was starting to miss being near his brother – the scent of him which reminded him of his own being, the sense of his demon energy, the striking crescent moon on his brow and the stripes on his cheeks and wrists, the way his pure white mane of hair moved as he walked, and the sheer power and beauty of his presence were each and all incomparable. Nothing anywhere else in the world that Inuyasha had ever known was quite like it.

His eyes closed and he began to sink into a well-earned sleep, cushioned by the softly dawning knowledge that he was actually looking forward to seeing Sesshomaru in the morning.

That tiny glimmer of knowledge as his consciousness faded led him down a dream-paved path into a vision where he was wandering calm and unafraid through a garden he had never seen before, secure in the company of trees, feeling perfectly contented with his life. Then he realised in the dream that he was really walking through the garden in search of his brother, and he did not know why, but he suddenly grew fearful that he would not find him.

He found himself, in that abrupt way dreams have of changing scenes in a second, rushing towards a small, white-haired, golden-eyed child sitting in the grass. The child had a crescent moon on his brow and magenta markings over his cheekbones, and Inuyasha knew with his dream-logic that this was his brother, and he himself was Inuyasha the adult who had almost lost Sesshomaru the child. Nearly overwhelmed by relief, he scooped the little one up in his arms and asked: "Where have you been?"

As he clutched the child to his chest and rained kisses on his snowy head, the dream-logic shifted again, and suddenly he was the child, and Sesshomaru was holding him tight against him and kissing his hair. Another shift, and neither of them were children any more, but he was clasped in his brother's powerful arms, and the kisses now were on his lips, his cheeks and his ears. When Sesshomaru found his lips again, Inuyasha put his hands round the back of his brother's head to keep him there, because he knew that if he did not hold him there and kiss him as if he were the creature he loved most in the whole world, Sesshomaru would be gone, gone forever, and Inuyasha urgently needed to keep him here…

He awoke quietly, not moving from where he lay but feeling as if he had plunged a million miles through the air from the garden he had been walking through to land soundlessly where he was now, in the doorway of the hut. He could almost taste Sesshomaru on his tongue. His fingers felt naked after having buried themselves in the dream-lord's incomparable mane of silken hair, and his arms felt empty.

Inuyasha shivered from the sensations that the dream had left him with, but as he closed his eyes again, he could not say for certain if that physical response to his night vision was a shudder of fear, or a tremor of desire.


	24. Passing Time

The demon lord's second visit to the village with the great tree sacred to the gods was very different from his first.

Then, he had arrived in his battle armour, accompanied by soldiers who threatened the villagers with claws and weapons. Now he came in peace, riding his two-headed dragon, and the demons who accompanied him rode massive flying beasts with piles of gifts strapped to their backs.

The villagers watched in awe as the great beasts landed in the fields on the edge of the village, while Sesshomaru's two-headed dragon came lightly to ground in the heart of the settlement, mere feet away from them. The demon lord dismounted and strode towards Inuyasha and the villagers, a striking vision in white and gold who looked as if nothing could touch him.

His outward demeanour betrayed no sign that from a mile away, up to the point where he descended to the earth, he had been putting out his feelers through scent, sight and spiritual energy for Inuyasha, hoping that he would not find him gone. He showed nothing of the immense relief he had felt to find his younger brother here, waiting for him at the front of the group of villagers who had gathered to greet him.

The villagers bowed to their beautiful demon king, and Sesshomaru inclined his head graciously to them, which was more than most human nobles did for the common folk who greeted them.

"On my last visit, I threatened this village with destruction if my brother ever left my castle," Sesshomaru said to the gathered villagers in a calm, clear voice that fully held their attention. "I withdraw that threat, and to express my sincere regret that I ever made it, I wish to give your village some things that I hope you will find useful."

Sesshomaru nodded to the demons who had landed at the edge of the village. At once, they led their dragons forward carefully so as not to trample the crops, and began to unload the beasts' burdens. As the large baskets, bags and boxes were unstrapped from the dragons, Sesshomaru explained their contents: "I have brought blankets and quilts that will make cool bedding in the summer, and warm coverings in the winter. These lengths of fabric and pieces of deerskin are meant for you to make clothing and footwear for yourselves and your children. The fifty sacks now being unloaded contain the best-quality seed that you can use to grow better crops. And in these crates, my healers have put together a quantity of medicinal herbs that are hard to find in the wilds, but which will be useful for treating a variety of human ailments."

Sesshomaru need not have listed the items himself – he could have left such a mundane task to one of his attendants – but he elected to speak directly to the villagers as a mark of respect, and to honour them for having been good to Inuyasha.

He said as much by continuing: "To thank you further for sheltering my brother, Inuyasha, for fifty years, and for receiving him again so warmly these two days past, I am halving the taxes you need to pay to the governor of this region, for the next fifty years. I have written to the governor, and have informed him that the taxes he needs to pay to his minister will be reduced by that very amount, so he does not lose anything in the transaction, and knows that he is not to harass you for more payment. Should the governor or anyone else give you trouble, be assured that I will hear of it, because I have engaged a team of slayers trained to kill human-eating demons to live in your village, and they will also be tasked to keep me informed of any other kind of trouble that may affect you. They will reach your village tomorrow."

A buzz of excitement went round among the gathered villagers at the news of all these good things that were now theirs to enjoy. The village headman and the two priestesses stepped forward and bowed low to the demon lord as they gratefully received the scroll with the royal seal giving the village the right to pay a reduced tax for a period of fifty years, the same amount of time for which they had sheltered the prince.

Sesshomaru accepted their thanks with a formal nod, and with a glow inside him that came partly from his act of kindness to people he had formerly despised, but mostly from the sight of Inuyasha's enormous golden eyes shining with amazement and pride, and with an emotion that looked very much like admiration, or perhaps even love.

…

Inuyasha bade farewell to the villagers that morning and promised to visit again in a few months. He said a quieter goodbye to Kikyo and Kaede under the great tree, and pressed the sum of money he had prepared into Kikyo's hands, convincing her to keep it by saying that he knew she would end up spending almost all of it on others, or on offerings to the gods, rather than on herself.

Then he turned his eyes to Sesshomaru, who stood patiently by his two-headed dragon, Ah-Un, waiting for him to be ready to leave.

He did not drop his eyes as he so often had when Sesshomaru looked at him in the castle. This time, he held his gaze until he mounted the dragon.

Inuyasha had last departed from this village clasped like a prisoner in the demon lord's arms, but now he was seated behind him on his great mount, and dressed very finely, for he had changed into the garments that Sesshomaru had brought along for him.

As Ah-Un took to the air, followed by all the other dragons and steeds, Inuyasha waved to the villagers, particularly to Kikyo and Kaede. Finally, he tried to make out Kikyo's face alone as they rose higher and turned to the west, and he looked back at her as long as he could see her, until the village was no more than a speck in the distance.

Understanding something of how he felt to be leaving his ageing friends behind, Sesshomaru did not try to engage him in conversation during the flight home, but contented himself with the feeling of having him right against his back, sitting close enough to kiss if he could only turn his head back and press his lips against the boy's mouth… but that was out of the question.

As they flew along, Inuyasha was preoccupied with thoughts of what Kikyo had said to him in private when he had gone back to her hut to change into his castle attire, and they had had a few moments alone after he emerged from behind the screen.

She had said with a smile: "You look perfect."

"I look the same, it's only the clothes that are different," he had replied.

"Nonetheless, you look very well in them. Your brother has taken care to choose what would suit you perfectly. It shows his attention to your needs. I like what I see of it, for through it and through other little things, I can tell that he has changed."

"You can tell that?" Inuyasha asked.

"Yes. To be honest, when you came back two days ago, I was tempted to make plans for you to run away, and somehow protect the villagers at the same time. I fretted in secret over how you must have suffered at your brother's hands, despite all your assurances in your letter. But when you appeared before me, you looked well. I sensed contentment from your spirit. Also, the tutor and guards with you did not appear to be your jailors, but your protectors. So I refrained from asking you to slip away from your brother forever. I am glad that I did not put my plans into action, because now that I have looked into the demon lord's eyes, I see something there that I did not see before, and the sword he wears resonates in harmony with the demon blade you carry, which I can sense is in tune with your soul. Therefore, I no longer fear for you, as long as you are happy to be with him."

"You need never fear for me, Kikyo. Now assure me that I need never fear for you," he had said to her, taking her softly wrinkled hands in his and touching his forehead to hers. Her face was that of an old woman's, and Inuyasha's eyes and mind saw that as well as anyone else did; but to his heart, she was the same beautiful Kikyo he had first met when she was fifteen, just as his mother had always been the beautiful woman of her youth to him, even to the day she died.

"You need never fear for me," she told him. "I have lived a good life and I will die a good death, and my spirit will always be with you, the way your mother's love always goes with you wherever you are."

Her answer did not put his heart entirely at ease, for what he had was an unrealistic hope that she would never weaken and never die, a wild hope that she would cheat death the way his mother had not been able to. But unlike his hope, her answer was grounded in the real world, heavy with its immutable facts of life.

They had spent a few moments in silence before drawing apart and returning to where the demons and villagers were gathered. He had said his proper goodbyes to everyone, a final farewell to Kikyo and Kaede under the great tree, and then he had left.

When they reached the castle, Inuyasha did not know if it was his imagination, or the lighting, but it seemed to him that the demon eyes that looked out at him from every corner were now less hostile, and more respectful. Natsumi and Kazuki, the healer Satoshi, Sesshomaru's attendant Isshin, a few officers from the barracks, the chef in charge of the royal kitchen and some of the dining hall attendants, as well as a female dog demon that Inuyasha recognised as Mamoru's sister, were among the staff who turned out especially to welcome him back after his brief stay in the village.

The castle felt warmer, as if he was in a place that was now feeling more like home.

Sesshomaru led him upstairs, and they entered Inuyasha's room. They closed the door behind them and stood facing each other, a foot apart.

"Thank you for coming home with me," the demon lord said sincerely to Inuyasha.

"I should be the one thanking you for letting me visit my friends, and for your generous gifts to the village – it means a lot to me that you did all that for them," the half-demon said in return. "It puts me at ease to know that they will have better lives because of what you have done for them, and will be protected by the slayers you hired. I was afraid that without me, they might get into trouble."

"Over fifty years, you must have taught them a great deal about defending themselves and their property against raiders and human-eating beasts. I believe they are stronger and more capable than you might think."

"And I am stronger and more capable than you might think," Inuyasha took the opportunity to say, looking Sesshomaru full in the face. "I don't want to do nothing around here. I want to work and get involved with things. I don't want to be some useless prince who just lies around and – and, you know…"

"And is treated by his lord and brother like a toy?"

"Yes," Inuyasha stated, keeping his eyes fixed on Sesshomaru although he was a little embarrassed and wished to look away.

Sesshomaru lifted his hand to Inuyasha's face and stroked his cheek, then said gently: "You are no toy, and I will never treat you like one again. You shall attend the meetings I hold with my ministers and staff from next month onwards, and we shall see over time where your best talents lie. I do not want to rush you into responsibilities that you find yourself unsuited for, as you are still so young. You must continue your lessons with Jaken, for you still have much to learn."

"Thank you, Sesshomaru," Inuyasha said, and hugged him as he had before he had left for the village. Somewhere in that hug was an echo of the dream he had dreamt the night before, and he tightened his embrace. With his fingertips he stroked Sesshomaru's hair lightly, not daring to follow those silken strands all the way up to his scalp and draw his brother's head down… but no, that was only a dream…

"Are you well? Did something upset you on the return journey, or when we entered the castle?" Sesshomaru asked, concerned by the way Inuyasha was almost clinging to him, and fingering his hair. It felt different from the hug the boy had given him before he left for the village, but Sesshomaru imputed the feeling to his own desires.

"No," Inuyasha murmured into the fabric of the clothing covering Sesshomaru's chest before raising his head and tilting it backwards to look up playfully at Sesshomaru. "I'm just really glad that I didn't run away."

"Were you considering it?"

"Uhm… maybe…" Inuyasha said cheekily.

"So you don't regret coming back with me."

Inuyasha shook his head. He gazed up into Sesshomaru's face, and knew that if he were to be fully faithful to the feelings that the dream had left him with, he would try to kiss Sesshomaru on the mouth now, or let him try to kiss him, as he knew he would if he continued looking up at him like this.

The dream was still vivid in his mind, compelling him to do as its lingering emotions drew him to. But he told himself again that it was only a dream, and they were still finding their way with each other, so Inuyasha pushed it to the back of his mind and lowered his eyes.

He felt guilty once he did that, however, because Sesshomaru took it as a cue to do nothing further than to kiss him on the forehead. As those warm lips brushed his skin, Inuyasha knew he had denied the dream and cheated himself of something. But he was really still so uncertain, and things were only just beginning to stabilise – he didn't want a massive upheaval now.

Feeling a little unhappy with himself, he hugged Sesshomaru again and buried his face in his robe front.

Sesshomaru savoured the embrace for as long as he dared, then he eased the boy back and said to him: "Go and pay your respects to your tree-demon godfather. I will see you at dinner time."

Inuyasha nodded and ran out of the castle towards the forest patch, leaving his doubts about the dream and the kiss behind him like a child forgetting his responsibilities.

He spent the whole of that afternoon telling Bokusen'o all about the great tree that was sacred to the gods, and listening in turn to his fascinating stories about how tree demons could communicate with trees that were alive in spirit, and sometimes even watched over those that were alive as plants but had no soul in them.

"So the sacred tree in the village probably isn't a tree demon, then?" Inuyasha asked. "I have never sensed any demon aura emanating from it. But then I never sensed any demon aura emanating from _you_ , either, before you showed your face to me. I took this freshly fallen leaf from the ground under the tree – feel it."

Bokusen'o touched the end of a twig to the leaf, felt it carefully and said thoughtfully: "Tree demons have a different kind of demon-energy from animal demons and elemental demons. Our auras are not always recognisable to those who are not familiar with them. Perhaps it was meant to be so, as my kind is less mobile than other demon species, so it is good that we can conceal ourselves even from the sharpest-nosed and most sensitive individuals. Your great tree in the village is probably not a demon, but a tree with a powerful and benevolent spirit, which is why it has been regarded for centuries as a tree sacred to the gods. Ancient priestesses and monks who could sense such spiritual strength must have been drawn to it, and from those times of old, it would have been held in great regard by the people, and that tradition would have been passed through the generations to the present day."

"Maybe it was pierced long, long ago by one of the purified shards of the crystal from the heavens, and became wise and strong, good and powerful, making it different from other trees around it," Inuyasha said.

"You are thinking of that old legend of the crystal jewel that your tutor related to you. Even one as old as myself has no idea if such a legend has any truth in it, for the time of the gods and imps in which such events were said to have taken place was a time close to the very dawn of the world's existence. Who knows? Maybe there is truth in it. After all, have we not seen with our own eyes how one who has been little more than cruel and cold for years can swiftly change for the better?"

"I'm guessing that you mean Sesshomaru," Inuyasha murmured.

"Perhaps he has felt the mysterious discomfort of a sacred shard needling his heart."

"I don't think he needs any more holes in his heart. Apparently he thinks our father left a gigantic one there."

"Sometimes it is necessary to pierce something again in order to repair it. Isn't that how one stitches together something that has been torn apart?"

"Well then, for his sake, I hope that if he gets stuck with any sacred shards, that they turn out to be sacred _needles_!" Inuyasha said cheekily.

"With a bit of half-demon thread attached, perhaps?" Bokusen'o countered meaningfully.

"Ha ha, very funny," Inuyasha mumbled. "Why do you have to bring me into this?"

"Young one, you are already in it – deep in it."

…

"For goodness' sake, I was only gone _two days_!" Inuyasha protested as Natsumi got to work on his hair with a vengeance as he sat in the steaming-hot bath just before dinnertime. "It's not as if I spent two months living like a pig in the jungle, you know!"

"Yes, I know," Natsumi said patiently. "But it is a matter of pride to me that Your Highness' hair should always look its best, and I could not help noticing that it looked distinctly less shiny upon your return – no doubt that is perfect for living outside the castle, but in here, it is my job to make sure that you never look anything less than perfectly groomed."

"I think you've just about groomed my scalp off!" he growled.

"I have been _perfectly_ gentle, Your Highness. If I am rubbing at your scalp a little more than usual it is because there is grime on it! What have you been doing?"

"Let's see – carrying barrels of rice around, repairing sheds and outhouses, reroofing huts, chopping up firewood, gardening, tilling the ground, fixing a leak in the well, delivering a calf, and..."

"Repairing _outhouses_?" Natsumi exclaimed. "Climbing into wells! Oh…"

With that groan of dismay, the racoon demon scrubbed away harder at the prince's scalp and along his length of hair, drawing another protest from him and finally withdrawing from the bathroom only when he yelped out his loud objections at her attempts to grab a washcloth and scrub the rest of his body too.

But when he emerged from the bath and towelled himself down, he felt relaxed and recharged, and began to realise by simple experiential comparison that life in villages was truly hard. He had never thought about it while living there – it had felt like paradise to him after life alone in the deepest wilds – and he had not really considered the difference during his two-day visit. Being back here now, however, caused him to feel as if an enormous load of responsibility had been lifted from his shoulders.

In the village, despite Kikyo's and Kaede's frequent reminders to the other humans over the span of fifty years that Inuyasha was only a boy in demon terms, he had still taken on the work of a man – no, ten men – purely because he had the physical strength and willingness to handle it. His brash demeanour also made people think he was psychologically older than he really was. He had defended the village, always leading the way in fights against human-eating demons and raids by bandit groups, and taking charge of tackling damage from strong winds, floods and earthquakes. Everyone looked to him for protection and leadership in these matters.

He remembered Kaede saying often to him: _I remember how you were when first my sister and I set eyes on you fifty years ago – a scrawny little half-demon boy no bigger than a twelve-year-old human child wandering through the forest, picking up the food that Kikyo dropped on purpose from her herb basket. Look how big you've grown – but never forget that it isn't wise to let others push you to grow too old for your true age before your time. It isn't healthy._

He had always scoffed and said that if he was strong enough, he was old enough. Besides, he had been old long before his time from all the bullying and isolation, hadn't he?

Kaede had never answered him directly, but would wait for other occasions which would give her an opportunity to remind him again not to grow up too fast – he should savour every stage of his life, especially as he had such a long lifespan to experience everything he should. She often said that he was not like humans, who had to hurry up and grow up so that they could live their lives to the fullest and achieve as much as they needed to for their families and communities before they died. He didn't have to rush.

Recalling those admonishments made Inuyasha begin to appreciate Sesshomaru's care to keep him from too much work responsibility before he was fully mature, and to understand that the priestesses had been wise to advise him as they had.

Besides, he thought secretly, as he returned to his bedroom and Natsumi patted his hair dry with soft towels, it was really nice to be pampered sometimes, especially while living in these comfortable, clean and really beautiful rooms, and to have so many things done for him.

When he had first returned to the castle sixteen days ago, he had hated the way being within these ancient walls made him feel like a child again, weak and helpless; but now, he began to concede that feeling like a child was not necessarily a bad thing, not when he could simply be himself and have others who cared about him looking out for him.

Perhaps now was the time to stop holding back from acting his age, and simply be the boy he really was.

Except… except that he had felt ever so grown-up in the dream he had dreamt last night. Its strikingly clear images had taken root in his mind and heart, giving him a peculiar sense of not entirely knowing if he was old or young, wise or foolish, experienced or naïve.

As he left his room and went downstairs towards the dining hall, he walked with the strange sensation of being a child who had once been grown-up, and who was now floating through the world, remembering what it was like to be old.


	25. Reaching Out

Sesshomaru had found a note waiting for him upon his return from the village, delivered that morning by a messenger sent from his mother's kingdom. She had taken her time to reply to his letter of several days ago regarding what to do with her clothes in storage.

Her note read:

 _Fifty years of not writing to your mother followed by a curt missive regarding the frivolous matter of my wardrobe? What have I done to deserve such a son? You may do whatever you like with the dresses I left with you – shred them, burn them, give them to the servants, or wear them yourself if you please. I have no need of them. I shall visit when I think I may have a friendlier reception than I did the last time I made the trip._

Sesshomaru knew that his mother was still annoyed by his refusal to so much as glance with interest at any of the potential mates she had gathered for him on her last visit. She had always known how to bear a grudge, although if he was to be fair, he would have to admit that she had toned down immensely from the years when he had been a child, and she had been a chilly ice queen who never forgave and never forgot.

Her separation from his father seemed to have mellowed her – perhaps because she no longer had to tolerate a mate whose sunny personality riled her so. She had even come to forgive the former demon lord, and had offered to stand with him against his enemies. His death had sobered her greatly, and she had learnt to let go of things that would only bring her pain and grief.

Now, she was a slightly bored dowager ruling a tiny but very secure kingdom of dog demons in the far west, with time to be petty about smaller matters.

Sesshomaru put her note away in a drawer and decided not to look at it again. He did, however, wonder about her silence with regard to his brother. He did not doubt that his mother, who had her own highly informed sources, would have been among the first to hear that he had brought Inuyasha back to the castle. Her saying nothing of the matter in her note – not making the slightest allusion to it – told the demon lord that she was sufficiently interested in this development not to refer to it until she had found out more. It implied that she would wish to see the boy with her own eyes before making one of her vague, unreadable comments about him, or about Sesshomaru's motives for tracking down his little brother.

Wondering if he ought to prepare Inuyasha for a visit from his… what was Sesshomaru's mother to Inuyasha, anyway? If the queen had remained with her mate, Inuyasha would have had to refer to her as his Royal First Mother, in the formal manner of noble households whose ruling lords had a first mate and other recognised mates of lower rank, as well as concubines.

But the queen had severed her mating ties with the former demon lord, leaving him free to declare Inuyasha's mother his new mate. Inuyasha therefore had no official, immediate-family links to Sesshomaru's mother. She was, however, a cousin of their father's, so Inuyasha could technically address her as his aunt, although that sounded strange to Sesshomaru. The most appropriate way the half-demon prince could address the queen would seem to be by her title and name, Lady Shirakumo.

These thoughts occupied him so that when he sat at the dinner table with Inuyasha that evening, he was fairly quiet. He was not hungry, so he did not eat, but only drank a bit of beef soup and sipped from a small glass of wine.

"Something on your mind?" Inuyasha asked between mouthfuls of beef, breaking in on his musings.

"I've had a letter from my mother."

"Oh. Is she coming for a visit?"

"That is a distinct possibility."

"I've never met her. What's she like? Will she try to kill me at first sight?"

"She has a flair for the dramatic, but if she had ever wanted to kill you, she would have done so when you were a child."

"Did she hate my mother?" Inuyasha asked, putting his cutlery down.

"I don't believe she did. Father fell in love with your mother long after my mother was done with him."

"How should I address her?"

"That is exactly what I was thinking about a few moments ago. I believe it would be best if you called her Lady Shirakumo."

Inuyasha grinned. "I'll bet her name reflects her appearance – she probably looks exactly like you, hair, crescent moon marking and all."

"I do have a strong resemblance to her," Sesshomaru admitted.

"What's with all the white hair in this family, anyway?"

"Our ancestors tended to mate within the family. It is hardly surprising that certain distinctive physical traits were reinforced over the generations, like pure white hair. My mother is a cousin of our father's, did you know?"

"No, I never knew that."

"Now you do. Our grandparents inherited two territories from their ancestors – the small kingdom now ruled over by my mother in the far west, populated almost entirely by dog demons; and this land, which Father started expanding in the earliest years of his rule to stretch from the west to the east. It made sense for Father to choose my mother as his first mate, and reinforce the ties between the kingdoms."

"So you would be the heir to your mother's kingdom too?" Inuyasha queried.

"Yes. Although her kingdom is tiny, it is important to us, because it was the first territory known to have been ruled over by the dog demons, from as far back as anyone can remember. Our tribe has its roots in that land, and our people were all originally native to that kingdom. This kingdom, in contrast, is very much a land of immigrants. A small population of our ancestors travelled to this place many millennia ago, marked out the territory our castle stands on, and held their little plot of land against all invaders, enlarging it as the years passed. In our grandfather's time, the first stones of this fortress were laid, and then Father came along some three thousand years ago. What I gathered is that from the moment he was considered a mature demon, he went forth and started to eliminate all opposition to his rule by the might of his sword, seizing large stretches of territory to the west, east, north and south, until he was lord over all that you see today. It took him many hundreds of years to do that, and our grandfather was dead of old age before he was through. But when Father was satisfied with what he had achieved, he was a powerful king indeed. To consolidate his ties to the original dog-demon kingdom, he courted his cousin, and won her as a mate."

"Did he love her?"

"I think he did, to begin with. She was – she still is – a remarkably beautiful demon, and she has her charms of character, when she chooses to show them. But what love there was evaporated quickly when they turned out to be mismatched in personality. I used to resent my mother for being detached and cold, because I was naturally that way too. As I grew older I began to resent Father for not trying harder with her, or with me. But at this stage in my life, I think I can say that I have arrived at a point where my perspective is that they were both at fault for not working harder to adapt to each other, and we were the ones who paid the price for their obstinacy."

"You must have hated me so much. My very existence represented all that went wrong between Father and your mother."

"It wasn't your fault, and I was too immature to accept that."

"I remind you of Father, don't I?"

"Yes."

"Is that who you see when you look at me?" Inuyasha asked softly.

"At first, yes. But I am coming to see you for who you are. It would hardly be fair to expect you to make up for all that I childishly believed I lacked from Father, merely because you resemble him in some ways."

An administrative attendant entered the dining hall and stood at a respectful distance from the table until Sesshomaru acknowledged his presence. He bowed to the two brothers, then addressed Sesshomaru: "My lord, the Minister for Development has sent his assistant to us with an urgent message – a river has burst its banks in the south, causing a large area encompassing several human communities to be flooded."

"Did he say how many casualties there were?"

"No, my lord. The minister's assistant is waiting outside your office."

"Inuyasha, please come with me," Sesshomaru said, getting to his feet.

Inuyasha rose and walked quickly beside Sesshomaru to the administrative wing, where a dog demon officer wearing the green uniform of the development ministry bowed and quickly updated Sesshomaru as he handed over the message scroll. When unfurled, the letter looked to have been written in a hurry.

The information in the scroll and the updates provided by the minister's assistant briefly but clearly outlined the situation: heavy rains in the south over the past weeks had swelled the rivers and loosened the earth of the banks. This evening, one great, bulging bank had crumbled, and an enormous rush of mud and water had swept in a flash across more than twenty hectares of low-lying farmland and village land, all covered now by a viscous sea which was spreading by the hour. Some fifty human bodies had been pulled out of the mud at the time the southern governors had written and sent off their reports to the minister, and more were expected to be found. Hundreds of villagers had been left homeless. The minister requested permission to temporarily divert the troops that were on their way from the north to help secure the southern border, to lend their numbers and strength to the area affected by the flood.

The south was far from Inuyasha's village in the east, but he had seen the devastation that nature could wreak, and his heart went out to the people who had lost loved ones, and possibly everything they owned.

Sesshomaru asked the officer: "What is the minister's plan?"

"My lord, Minister Mitsuharu has already sent his own security and logistical staff to the area, as well as many workers from his own estate to assist the southern governors in their effort. Their immediate priority is to rescue as many of the farming folk and their livestock as they can, and this they are doing even as we speak. Once no more survivors are to be found, they will concentrate more resources on repairing and reinforcing the damaged riverbank. If the rains continue, it may be necessary to divert some of the water from the river further upstream into areas not known to be populated, although the danger in doing that is possible flooding of the wilderness and forests, which may affect wildlife and demons living in isolation. Once the flooding is under control, we must begin to drain the water from the area and help the villagers repair their homes, which have all been destroyed."

"Diverting the water is not an ideal alternative," Sesshomaru said. "We must not actively destroy the forests and wilderness in addition to what nature has done to the farmland. Tell the minister that I approve of his plan to first rescue the people and livestock, and then reinforce the bank. However, I will not redirect the two hundred soldiers that are on their way to the south – they have only just set out from the north, and will not get there quickly enough. Besides, they are needed at the southern border. In any case, twenty hectares of devastation can fairly easily be tackled by half as many demon soldiers as the battalion moving south contains. I will therefore dispatch a hundred of my own soldiers and guards from the castle to fly south immediately on our dragons. They will also carry wood for shoring up the banks. You will leave with them."

"Yes, my lord. Thank you, my lord," the minister's assistant said, and withdrew as Sesshomaru called in his military officers and gave them their instructions.

"My lord," the dog demon captain in charge of overall security in the castle spoke. "This will leave the castle understaffed, and may affect security."

"It will reduce our security strength," Sesshomaru agreed. "However, we can halve staff strength in less sensitive areas – we do not need so many sentries watching the corridors and gardens when no threat is suspected. I trust that those remaining will double their alertness until their colleagues return. Send fifty soldiers from the company in charge of the castle grounds, and another fifty from the company watching the walls and gates. These are more skilled with rough outdoor work, and will handle the job better. Redeploy and redistribute staff from less sensitive sections to take over their duties. Take twenty-one dragons from the stable, but do not use any of those that have just returned from the eastern village – they need to rest. Ten should be fire-breathing beasts to evaporate the excess water directly from the overflowing river if necessary, and ten should be water dragons which can help to scoop up and drain the water and mud from the farmland. The last should be a strong pack animal that can transport wood from our storehouse to reinforce the riverbank, and also food like preserved meat and whole fruit to be distributed to the people. Bear in mind that humans cannot survive as long as demons can without clean drinking water and food, so check that the survivors are properly fed and given uncontaminated water from further upstream. Take blankets with you. If the development ministry staff have not already done so, you must find the people what shelter you can in unaffected villages near the area. "

"Yes, my lord," all the officers present replied, and marched out at once to scatter in different directions and carry out their orders immediately, the captain accompanying the officer from the development ministry.

Once they were alone in the office, Sesshomaru sat down and began to write a quick note to the Minister for Development, thanking him for his swift response to what must have been frantic reports from the southern governors to his ministry, which oversaw all matters of infrastructure, agriculture and business. He briefly reiterated the instructions he had given the officers, and concisely explained his reasons for doing so.

Sesshomaru sealed the letter, summoned a messenger, and instructed him to give the scroll at once to the captain who would be leading the troops to the south.

"Minister Mitsuharu was not always tolerant of humans before," Sesshomaru said to Inuyasha when the messenger had left, to explain why he wished to write and deliver that letter immediately. "But in the last seventy years or so, I have perceived a gradual change in his attitude, and in the way he treats the humans his ministry interacts with. He has seen how industrious and cooperative the humans in our kingdom can be, and he wanted some of that spirit in his staff, who were not always as efficient as they are now. For him to send his own staff to the disaster zone, and to respond so quickly, is something I want him to know that I appreciate."

"If this is the sort of thing you want me to learn, I'm not sure I would even begin to know how to respond," Inuyasha said, slightly stunned by the speed and decisiveness with which everything had unfolded. "If it were me in your shoes, I probably wouldn't have the sense to do anything other than leap over to the south myself and start hauling people out of the mud with my bare hands."

"Responding in person is useful and quick in situations of limited scope close at hand, but not the most efficient or effective way of dealing with a larger-scale problem at a distance," Sesshomaru replied. "The best way may not always be the way you know best."

"Damn, I don't know how I'll ever learn that. I'm still in a bit of a daze at how quickly you assessed the situation without even seeing it with your own eyes."

Sesshomaru put a hand on Inuyasha's shoulder. "That is because such things are new to you, and you have spent a hundred and ninety years of your life handling everything by yourself, not to mention the last fifty single-handedly taking on heavy village chores for the people instead of marshalling them to do your bidding. In a single village, you might cope; but when ruling a kingdom, you cannot be everywhere."

It was getting late, so Sesshomaru told Inuyasha to go back to his room first, for he still had paperwork to look over, and letters to send to other tribes and states to ask them to be generous about contributing the food and building materials they could spare to the villages affected by the flash flood.

But Inuyasha wanted to stay and see what else needed to be done in such situations. So Sesshomaru moved his paperwork to the low table and sat on a large cushion on the floor, with Inuyasha beside him.

He wrote the letters to the tribes in his kingdom and instructed messengers to have them delivered in the morning. He also began on a precisely worded letter to the southern governors ordering them to investigate the collapse of the river bank – was it the result of too much forest land being carelessly cleared to make way for various developments? How did they intend to prevent such a thing from happening during the next rainy spell? He put the letter aside to be sent later, only after the rescue and repairs had been seen to, for he did not wish to distract the governors from their emergency operations.

Two hours after he had begun his work at the low table, Sesshomaru felt Inuyasha leaning against his left shoulder, and found that he had fallen asleep beside him. He carefully manoeuvred the boy's head into his lap without waking him, and kept working.

When Inuyasha stirred and unconsciously rubbed his face against Sesshomaru's thigh in a rather distracting way, the elder of the two decided that it was time to call it a night. He put away his papers and gently shook Inuyasha awake.

"Mmmf… did I fall asleep?" the boy asked, sitting upright in a second, embarrassed to discover that he had slumped all the way down into his brother's lap. "Sorry…"

"I did advise you to go upstairs earlier," Sesshomaru reminded him.

"I know, but I wasn't tired. I'm still not. It's just that all those letters were kind of repetitive. Don't you have scribes to do that sort of thing for you?"

"Not everything we do here is exciting. I use my scribes mainly for routine administrative missives. I prefer to have the recipients of my letters in this kind of situation know that they came from my own hand. Come, it's time for bed."

He walked Inuyasha upstairs to his bedroom door and returned to his own room, resigned by now to the routine that they had established from before Inuyasha paid his visit to the village. He changed out of his robes into his sleepwear and climbed into his bed, thinking all the while of the pleasing weight of the boy's head in his lap.

Just as he thought how much he would like to run his hand over that length of thick white hair, a tingle ran through his body as the muted, almost inaudible sound of stone moving smoothly against stone caught his ear. He sat up and looked towards the other end of the room to see the hidden door of the secret passage opening, and Inuyasha stepping out, clad in his white sleepwear.

"You said I could use it any time," the half-demon said, a little uncertainly. "So I thought I'd come down the passageway… if you don't mind…"

"Any time," Sesshomaru confirmed, keeping his voice hushed to not allow his feelings to flood his entire being.

"I just…" Inuyasha began, but did not finish his sentence.

"You wanted my company?" Sesshomaru finished the thought for him.

Inuyasha nodded.

The demon lord shifted over to one side of his bed, and Inuyasha crossed the room to slip under the covers with him.

"I just want to be here with you," Inuyasha said, as he found his tongue again. "I'm not here for anything else…"

"I understand," Sesshomaru replied, turning onto his side to face him.

"I really liked hearing about our family's history and about your mother at dinner. I'd like to hear a bit more if you don't mind."

"What would you like to hear about?" Sesshomaru asked.

"Tell me about a time when your mother and our father were happy together," Inuyasha requested.

"I don't think they were terribly happy together by the time I came along, so I can't recall that many good moments. But things were fine sometimes, when Father wasn't planning one assault or another on tribes giving him trouble, and Mother was in one of her calmer moods. When I was a small pup, I liked the evenings after dinner when Mother would sit with me in the nursery and Father would join us later if he did not have too much work to do. Mother occasionally indulged him by letting him rest his head in her lap while she sat on the carpet playing with me. If I was still awake, I would crawl onto Father's chest and fall asleep there. Sometimes he took me to his room with him if he did not want to leave me in my own bed. At those times my mother would come with us, so I would wake to find myself safe between my parents, and if I was very lucky, I would even find that they were holding hands, their interlinked fingers resting lightly on me."

"That sounds nice," Inuyasha murmured, thinking of how his own mother would often rest a protective, reassuring hand on him as he slept.

"It happened less and less often, until it ceased altogether, things grew unpleasant between them, and Mother left. But I understand now the mistake I have made all the years of my life, by reacting with coldness and anger at the loss of anything I treasured, and to resent what I imagined took it from me, instead of appreciating the time for what it was while it lasted, and to accept that all things can and must change. My godfathers tried to teach me that philosophy, but I could never comprehend it in my heart, until now. Until you turned my life upside down and reminded of me of who I was when I was younger."

"Everything in your life changed because I was born, didn't it?" Inuyasha asked, rather sadly.

Sesshomaru stretched a hand out and stroked his brother's cheek. "I'm glad you're here. Father wanted you. Your mother wanted you. And I am glad that you came into the world."

"I'm glad that you're glad. Really."

With that, Inuyasha snuggled deeper into the bed and let his eyes close. Heeding his cue, Sesshomaru turned onto his side to face away from him, so that the boy could sleep without being stared at.

But an hour or so later, when Sesshomaru himself was sleeping lightly, he felt Inuyasha burrow up against his back like a child seeking security and warmth. When Sesshomaru reached an arm round and touched him to communicate that he was pleased to have him close, he felt his hand covered and clasped by his brother's, and Inuyasha's fingers slipping between his own, in a meeting and forging of links that had very nearly been lost forever.


	26. Contact

Inuyasha had had the good sense to lock his room door before using the secret passage in the night, so that if he overslept here, Natsumi would not enter his room in the morning to find him missing. In any case, it was still dark when he awoke in Sesshomaru's bed, and the colour of the sky told him that Natsumi would not be along for at least another hour.

Judging by the sound of his breathing, Sesshomaru seemed to be asleep. They had not moved much from their positions of the night before, and his hand was still over Sesshomaru's. The demon lord's sleeping garments were long-sleeved, so Inuyasha could not see the traces of the wound his sword had made a few days ago. A deep sniff of the arm through the fabric of the clothing, however, revealed no hint of blood or raw flesh.

"Do I smell good to you?" Sesshomaru's soft voice reached his ears.

Inuyasha blushed and released Sesshomaru's hand. "I was checking if your wound was healed. You haven't mentioned it since collecting me from the village."

"It's healed," his brother said, lifting his sleeve to expose pale skin which showed barely any trace of what had happened.

Inuyasha traced a finger over the thin white line which had previously been a long, gaping red gash, sniffed the spot again, and pronounced: "You don't smell too bad."

"I'll take that as high praise, coming from you," Sesshomaru said.

Inuyasha snorted, sat up and jumped off the bed. "I'd better go back to my room, so I can be asleep again by the time Natsumi comes in."

"Inuyasha."

"Hmm?"

"I liked having you beside me all night."

The half-demon's cheeks reddened again, but he said casually enough: "Well, don't get too used to it – I like my own bed too, you know – you did have a very nice one made for me."

He shot off down the passageway, closing the door behind him, leaving Sesshomaru to observe with regret that he had not invited him to slip over next door to share that very nice bed.

…

For once, Inuyasha arrived in the dining hall before Sesshomaru did. He sat down and waited for his brother, pouring out only a glass of milk for himself. The attendants tried to serve him, but he did not like to start eating before Sesshomaru was seated, so he declined and sipped his milk.

The dining chairs were rather high. Because he was sitting right back in his seat, his feet rose off the ground a shade, and he caught himself kicking his heels against the chair legs like a child.

He stopped himself the moment he became aware of it, but he also realised that he must be more comfortable here now if he could absent-mindedly kick the chair legs like that. In the first days after his return, he had been so intimidated by Sesshomaru and miserable with his circumstances that he had sat here rigidly, moving as little as possible.

Maybe he could really get used to this place.

The demon lord entered the dining hall just then, and motioned to Inuyasha not to bother with rising to greet him. The attendants brought letters to the table, and Sesshomaru read them, noting to his satisfaction and telling Inuyasha that the flooding in the south was under control. The letters reported that many people who would otherwise have drowned or died of exposure had been found and plucked to safety from the waters and mud by the soldiers and guards Sesshomaru had sent. More updates were promised as things progressed.

Not five minutes after Sesshomaru sat down, the chief of the guards in charge of castle security appeared at another entranceway, bowing to the two brothers and saying: "My lord, you wished to see me?"

Sesshomaru beckoned to him to approach the table. "I want you to inform the guards at the gates and the walls that my brother may leave the castle whenever he likes, provided that he is chaperoned by his tutor Jaken, and takes two reliable guards with him for protection. He should always finish his morning lessons before going out. The guards are to advise the prince about which places are safe for him, and which are not, and he is to heed their advice."

When he spoke these latter few words, Sesshomaru looked pointedly at Inuyasha, whose eyes had grown into huge golden circles.

"They must also advise their prince on these outings, which are strictly to take place within the hours of daylight, that it is not safe for him to be away from the castle grounds for more than two hours a day. Only if he leaves the grounds in my company will he not have to adhere to these rules."

"Yes, my lord," the chief of security replied. "I shall inform the guards about these new guidelines, and update those who are on their mission to the south, when they return."

He bowed and left the dining hall.

"You trust me not to disappear?" Inuyasha asked Sesshomaru, knowing in his heart that he had not made a mistake in coming back here.

"You returned to me, didn't you?" Sesshomaru asked.

"So do I have to be chaperoned? It's silly. I've looked after myself for one hundred and thirty years."

"Which I should never have allowed to happen. I am rectifying that now. You are still too young to be let out of your home without proper supervision, and that means being accompanied by an older relation or someone fit to assume the position of a guardian. Such rules are in place in every noble demon household, not for the amusement of the elders, but for the safety for the children – young ones of royal or noble blood are tempting targets for those who would abduct them and use them as pawns in political games. You were safe before because no one knew who you were. Now they know, and I will not have you put in danger to satisfy someone else's lust for power or wealth."

"Okay, okay, I get it. I'm _grateful_ , all right?" Inuyasha smiled. "I would love to check out the surrounding forest and the town nearby, and see what else is out there… but I won't start going out until the soldiers and guards sent to the south have returned – we're short of security staff as it is, so I don't want to take two more guards away."

"Thank you for your consideration," Sesshomaru replied, taking a drink of water, and watching with satisfaction as his brother ate heartily from the spread of food before them.

…

"Are you sure you want to spar with me again?" Inuyasha asked doubtfully, when Sesshomaru met him in the field after his morning lessons with Jaken (during which he had almost driven the kappa mad by questioning every single point he raised about the art and science of music appreciation).

"Are you questioning my courage?" Sesshomaru countered.

Inuyasha grinned and drew his sword. Once more, the blades sang and clashed fiercely. The younger of the two brothers remembered his lessons well from before his visit to the village; the short break from training even seemed to have improved his skills, for he moved in harmony with his blade and was more relaxed.

Though they trained diligently, there was less intensity in the air than there had been at their previous sparring sessions. A certain lightness between them sprang from Inuyasha's feeling good about his decision to return to the castle, and Sesshomaru's assurance that his brother was happier to be home than he had been before.

"Gotcha now!" Inuyasha yelled gleefully, as Sesshomaru failed to dodge his attack and the half-demon managed to tap his brother on the back of the thigh with the flat of his blade.

"Well done," Sesshomaru answered smoothly, before stepping away faster than Inuyasha's eye could follow him, and appearing on the other side of him. "But have you realised, little brother, that I have been slowing my movements to accommodate your training?"

As he spoke, he seemingly vanished again and reappeared before Inuyasha, forcing him to put up his sword abruptly to ward off the Tenseiga's descent onto his unguarded head. Again, Sesshomaru moved quicker than the half-demon could discern, and suddenly he was at his back, holding the edge of Tenseiga's blade against his throat.

"You're fast," Inuyasha gasped, wide-eyed, to find the blade under his chin, and shivering to feel Sesshomaru's breath against his ear. "How did you ever let me injure you?"

"I did not expect you to move the way you did then – so the lesson is that even if you are up against a demon who is faster than you, stay unpredictable, and you can still best him. Come at me again!"

Inuyasha whirled around to follow Sesshomaru's movements. As they trained, he developed a sense of where his brother was from the flow of his demon energy. Not wanting to risk delivering another serious wound to him by sticking his sword into the blur of movement, he proved that he could keep up with him simply by sheathing the Tetsusaiga swiftly and then jumping bodily onto Sesshomaru with a chuckle, pinning his arms to his sides from behind him, legs wrapped about his hips.

The demon lord turned his head and smiled at the monkey-like embrace his younger brother was giving him, before falling onto his back and squashing Inuyasha between himself and the grass.

"Ow! When did this turn into a wrestling match?" Inuyasha yelled, squirming under Sesshomaru's unyielding back.

"I believe you started it," Sesshomaru replied calmly, lying back and stretching out, further flattening the half-demon.

"Grrmmmph…" Inuyasha went, unable to emit a coherent sound with his face wedged between Sesshomaru's shoulder blades.

At last Sesshomaru had mercy on him and slid off to lie beside him on the grass as Inuyasha went through exaggerated motions of pretending to pinch and pull his own face back into shape. "Aaaugh! You've disfigured me for life!" he moaned as he thrashed about while keeping his hands pressed to his cheekbones, squeezing them as if attempting to press them closer to his nose.

"Mischievous little monkey," Sesshomaru said, raising himself and turning to take Inuyasha's wrists in his hands and remove them from his face. "Let's see what's happened to that beautiful countenance of yours – exactly nothing, silly pup. Your nose isn't even out of joint."

"Are you sure? Cos if I'm ugly for life now you'll be stuck with me forever – no one will ever want to mate me."

"You could never be ugly," Sesshomaru stated, looking down at the boy's face mere inches beneath his own. He released Inuyasha's wrists so that he could draw blades of grass out of the half-demon's hair.

Inuyasha moved to do the same for Sesshomaru. As he pulled out one cluster of burred seeds from the demon lord's silky platinum hair and flicked it aside, one hand lingered on Sesshomaru's shoulder. For a moment, Sesshomaru thought he might explore a little further.

But Inuyasha suddenly looked distracted and dropped his hand, swivelling his puppy ears and turning his head towards the crest of the gentle slope they lay on. "Someone's coming," he said, sitting up.

Sesshomaru sat up with him. Someone was indeed coming. It was the head of his administrative staff, moving swiftly across the open field above them. They stood up, Sesshomaru pausing to comb more grass out of Inuyasha's hair with his claws before giving his full attention to the head administrator.

"My lord," the demon said, bowing and giving Sesshomaru a folded letter. "Forgive me for disturbing you out in the field, but it is an urgent matter. Lord Naraku of the spider demons has sent a messenger to the southern border with this letter, and a message that he wishes to visit Your Majesty in person as soon as you are ready to receive him. Our messenger from the south also adds her own observation, that she sensed a presence which suggested to her that Lord Naraku may already be approaching our border, or may have reached it, unseen."

Sesshomaru's face darkened as he ripped open the folds of the letter and glanced at its contents, which were written in a bold black hand. "Naraku is never good news," he observed, speaking quietly, as if he were talking to himself. He remained silent for some moments before telling the head administrator: "Send back the message that I shall be ready to receive him tomorrow, at noon. Then contact the Minister for War and the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Ask them to attend a meeting with me over dinner this evening, in the main meeting room."

"Yes, my lord," the head administrator said before quickly returning to the castle to have those orders carried out.

…

The dining hall servants moved smoothly down the passageway and up the stairs away from their usual stations, carrying platters of food into the main meeting room in the security and administration wing.

There, the solid wooden table had been covered with crisp white linen and four places set with plates and cutlery. Sesshomaru was dispensing with formalities today and did not want his usual place at the head of the table. He and Inuyasha were to sit along one of the long sides of the table, while the two ministers who were their guests would sit facing them.

When the food was laid out, an attendant went to the smaller meeting room next door, where Sesshomaru was having drinks with the two ministers, to announce that dinner was served.

Sesshomaru then invited the ministers into the larger meeting room. As the ministers saw the fourth place, he explained: "My brother Inuyasha will be joining us for our dinner meeting. I did not want him sitting with us over drinks before that as he is unaccustomed to the taste of liquor – here he is."

The two ministers turned and bowed as the prince entered the meeting room, a striking figure in his navy and gold robe.

"Inuyasha, meet Chieftain Atsushi, Minister for War and the Maintenance of Peace," Sesshomaru said. "And Chieftain Ryota, Minister for Foreign Affairs."

Inuyasha bowed back to each of them and greeted them politely, eyeing the two older demons with a mixture of confidence and caution. The ministers in turn scrutinised his appearance and bearing without seeming to stare, an art they had long refined in their political careers.

They took their places, and ate with appreciation for the dishes laid before them, prepared from the finest ingredients which needed no elaborate cooking or fussy culinary alchemy to bring out their natural quality. The marble-textured, meltingly tender raw beef and the perfectly grilled pork paired beautifully with a hearty mixed-vegetable stew, while cold-water-chilled slices of delicious raw fish and the freshest spring greens provided relief for the palate. Wine was in the decanter for Sesshomaru and the ministers, while Inuyasha had a porcelain jug full of flower tea to fill his glass with.

But they were here not only to eat and drink; talking about Naraku was also on the menu.

As Minister for Foreign Affairs, Chieftain Ryota was almost always present to receive heads or ambassadors of other lands when they visited Sesshomaru; Minister Atsushi's portfolio did not include receiving most monarchs or visiting dignitaries, but Sesshomaru always requested his presence when the visitor was one they were not necessarily at peace with.

"The ministers and I have begun discussing Naraku's possible reasons for visiting at this time," Sesshomaru said to Inuyasha. "His letter merely says that it has been too long since he paid me a visit. However, he is most likely coming in response to the letter I sent him about the bandit tribes he permits to move freely out of his land to harass our borders."

Minister Ryota said: "He may also use the excuse of the floods in the south to offer the help of his tribe, and get a foothold in this kingdom."

"Help with the floods?" Inuyasha asked curiously. "The only thing spider demons are good at is building fancy webs – far as I know, those don't hold much water."

Chieftain Atsushi, the Minister for War, made a sound very much like a snort of laughter, which he turned into a cough, while Ryota raised his eyebrows and tried not to smile. The two demons were accustomed to deadly serious meetings with their lord in which no one ever smiled, so Inuyasha's presence was an unusual breath of fresh air.

"Naraku is still trying to establish a stronger spider-demon presence in these lands, and he has tried to do that in numerous ways," Minister Atsushi replied when he had cleared his throat. "With or without leaky webs." This he said while casting a twinkling glance at the prince.

"There are no spider-demon communities in these lands, only isolated spider-demon individuals," Sesshomaru explained to Inuyasha. "Naraku is keen to establish a community of his demons here. Our spies have long confirmed that it is one of his methods of extending his power and acquiring more resources."

"If he grandly and publicly offers his help, however, it would be ungracious to turn it down flatly," said Minister Ryota. "We must try to predict what he will offer, and channel it into an outlet that will not leave any of the people of this land beholden to him."

"Have the other tribes moved to help the human communities that suffered losses in the floods?" Sesshomaru asked. "I have received some written replies, but no confirmation as yet."

"I believe Minister Mitsuharu is compiling the information before he submits it to you, my lord," Ryota said. "My people have heard from his that all the demon tribes linked with our lands have responded positively with appropriate quantities of aid, as have human communities unaffected by the disaster."

"Good," Sesshomaru stated. "In that case, we can truthfully inform Naraku that help has already been provided by the people of our own lands in generous amounts, and we would not wish to waste his resources. We might suggest that if he has so much to spare, it would be very gratefully received instead by the large numbers of starving and impoverished itinerants living between our two lands."

"In saying so, we need not mention that those impoverished itinerants are his own border outlaws," Atsushi remarked. "It would certainly be an appropriate place to direct his unwelcome goodwill – if he fed his own people better, they would not have to try to cross borders just to feed themselves, and we would not be troubled by them."

"We shall deflect his offer in that way," Sesshomaru decided.

"My lord, I have also sent detailed orders to the southern border guards regarding the security and safety precautions they must take when Naraku and his people cross," said Minister Atsushi. "Security staff from my own ministry will escort the visitors from the border to the castle, and ensure that they do not trouble a certain someone who is currently at her house in the town."

"A certain someone?" Inuyasha asked.

"A wind demoness named Kagura," Sesshomaru said to his brother. "She was a creature formed by Naraku to be his first child, and was once one of his most reliable assassins and aides. But years ago, when she learnt of a dishonourable plot he was hatching against me, she defected from his service and his lands to warn me of the danger, almost at the cost of her life. She has lived within our borders since then, under my protection."

"Why do you still maintain diplomatic relations with him?" Inuyasha asked. "Isn't that a good enough reason for war?"

"The plot was never carried out," said Ryota. "We had no proof, other than a wind demoness with a massive hole in her chest and her heart pumped full of spider venom by her own 'father', drawing what would have been her last breath had our healers not succeeded in extracting the poison. So there was no war, and ties remain delicate."

"Kagura has been informed about the visit," Minister Atsushi said. "She is on full alert for danger, even though we still have doubts about whether Naraku knows that she survived."

"Excellent. As for Naraku's presence in the castle," Sesshomaru continued, "we shall have to take especial care that he and his entourage do no harm within these walls. It is unfortunate that we are short of guards and soldiers at this time. However, I have briefed my officers thoroughly about this visit, and they have made plans to utilise our security staff strategically. At no time is the spider lord or any member of his entourage to be left unobserved outside of their bedrooms."

"My lord, Minister Ryota and I have also discussed the matter, and we propose that we bring along a larger number of our own staff than we normally do when we make formal visits to the castle. Some of them can be our own security staff attired as attendants. We ourselves can keep an eye on what goes on in the guest wing, while our staff can watch the visiting servants."

"I would appreciate that," Sesshomaru replied.

"And I can stand guard wherever you like," Inuyasha spoke up stoutly.

In a lightly amused tone of voice, Minister Atsushi said: "Your Highness, I do not think I am very much mistaken when I say that I believe Lord Sesshomaru would rather assign even more guards to you at such a time than allow you to stand guard anywhere."

Sesshomaru's face revealed no reaction to the minister's words, but his deep golden eyes were turned onto Inuyasha thoughtfully. "You must be very careful when Naraku is here," he said to his brother. "The spider is devious in the extreme, and knows no honour. I would prefer not to have you anywhere near him, but your presence as the prince and my brother is expected when a head of state visits. Therefore, I must ask you to take care not to be alone with him or with any member of his entourage."

"He can't be that scary," Inuyasha remarked. "I've taken on all kinds of demons in my years outside the castle."

"Not like this one. No one really even knows what Naraku is," Sesshomaru said seriously. "He is a spider demon-like being that was formed upon the death of the former spider-demon leader, Onigumo. He is said to contain demon souls and human souls, and to be held together by magic. Technically, he is a half-demon. However, he is no natural half-demon like you are – he is an amalgamation of things glued to one another by foul means."

"If that's so, there must be a way to _un_ glue him," Inuyasha declared optimistically. "If he misbehaves, I'll stick him in a cauldron of boiling water till he comes unstuck."

Minister Atsushi did laugh this time, saying: "It is _very_ good to have you home, my prince."

Sesshomaru smiled at Inuyasha's boldness too, but continued to regard him with serious eyes that were focused on the dangers of having Naraku under the same roof as his little brother.

…

The two ministers took their leave of Sesshomaru and Inuyasha when their discussion was over, returning to their homes nearby. There, they would brief their most trusted staff about Naraku's impending arrival, and prepare to return to the castle with them early in the morning.

"I won't know what I'm supposed to do during Naraku's stay," Inuyasha remarked, as he and Sesshomaru made their way back towards the royal wing. "Not that I give two hoots about that sort of thing, but I don't want to embarrass _you_ by doing anything I shouldn't."

"I know that Jaken's lessons have touched on court etiquette at official events, so you have some idea of what is expected of you," Sesshomaru replied. "You needn't worry. The attendants and officials will show you to your place, whichever room we are in. Stand by my side, and sit close to me in the throne room. When we eat in the dining hall, take your usual seat beside me. The ministers will hold the fort nearer to the other end and entertain Naraku's entourage, which comprises individuals who are dangerous in themselves. Remember that I do not want you alone with any of them. You may also wish to keep your attendant out of sight."

"Natsumi? Why?" Inuyasha asked, surprised.

"Did she tell you that she was once enslaved by a spider demon?"

"Yes. Do you mean–"

"That was Naraku. Minister Atsushi can tell you how Natsumi was smuggled out of Naraku's castle sixty years ago when he was clearing out the surplus slaves that bored him – at least, those that were still alive. The girl was handed to slavers who at the time were allowed to cross borders as freely as messengers still are. Atsushi was at the southern border visiting the battalion stationed there, and in his own words, he 'took pity on this thin little racoon demon chained to a cart, sick and broken'. She had been routinely beaten, mutilated and burnt by her old master, and she had become so ill that the slavers were thinking of cutting their losses and dumping her in the wilderness to die. Atsushi bought her and took her home. His people cleaned her up and looked after her. He gave her a safe place in his household to heal from her years of injuries. When she was well and even her deepest scars were gone, he saw that she was quite pretty, and presented her to me. I no longer kept slaves, so I employed her. She did very well here until Naraku's last visit forty years ago. She suddenly disappeared and did not turn up for her usual duties. The head of my household staff found her hiding in the stables, cowering under my two-headed dragon, almost unable to speak from her terror of finding Naraku under the same roof as herself. It took the other servants two days of looking after her and keeping her away from the spiders to get her back to normal. You may think I have always used my servants too intimately, Inuyasha, and perhaps I have. But I can assure you that I never beat her, burnt her flesh or drew blood from her – she has never done anything to deserve harsh punishment."

Inuyasha's heart was wrung to think of the quiet, gentle Natsumi, always so thoughtful and kind, enduring what must have felt like an endless hell as a slave at the hands of a cruel master. "She's never said anything… anything at all about how much she went through," he murmured. "All she said was that her former master was terrifying. No wonder she sounded so grateful to be working for you – erm, I mean – not that one _shouldn't_ be grateful to be working for you, but…"

"I know what you mean, Inuyasha," Sesshomaru said. "No need to scramble for the right words."

"No, I don't think badly of you as an employer, really!" Inuyasha qualified quickly. "I think you're a pretty fair ruler. Perverted, yes, and sometimes a bit extreme, but otherwise fair."

They had reached the top of the staircase leading up to their bedrooms. Sesshomaru paused, looked at Inuyasha, and said: "I don't believe I will ever merit unqualified praise from you, but I'm working on it."

Then he walked on down the corridor.

Inuyasha wished he had kept his big mouth shut, because he hated hearing the note of resignation in Sesshomaru's voice. He hurried after him and impulsively caught Sesshomaru's hand, saying: "I always say things I shouldn't." He slipped his arms under Sesshomaru's and wrapped them round his ribcage while pressing the side of his face into his shoulder. "You're really a very nice big brother to have when you're behaving decently. Thank you for telling me about Natsumi and for being kind to her – I'll ask her to remain in my room throughout Naraku's visit."

Behaving _decently_ – in a certain sense of that word – was the last thing on Sesshomaru's mind once he felt Inuyasha's body against his. But this, he knew, was a very hard-won embrace. So he quelled his urges and stroked Inuyasha's hair in silence.

"Shall I stay with you for a while tonight?" Inuyasha suggested.

"I thought you liked your own bed."

"Just for a while, until I get sleepy."

They moved past the guards into Sesshomaru's bedroom and closed the door. Upending protocol, Sesshomaru took Inuyasha's outer robe from him and draped it with his own over the clothing stand. Inuyasha shed his boots and socks and flopped onto his belly on the bed, staying on top of the covers but rubbing his face against the pillow like a puppy burrowing down into its sleeping blanket.

"I swear you have fluffier pillows than I do," Inuyasha commented, his voice muffled by the feather-filled cushion.

"All the pillows in your room and mine are of exactly the same quality," Sesshomaru stated as he lowered himself onto his bed beside his brother.

"Yours feel plumper."

"Perhaps if you didn't squash yours flat by tunnelling your face so hard into them they would stay fluffier."

Inuyasha rotated his head on the pillow to peer up with one eye at Sesshomaru through his silver strands of hair, all mussed up by his pillow-snuggling actions. Sesshomaru gently raked the hair off his face with the tips of his claws and gazed into the golden eyes that had so captivated him fifty years ago.

"I've only been back here for seventeen days – that's not a long enough time to squish pillows flat," Inuyasha mumbled.

"I can only speculate that you must have a naturally heavy head. That must be why your pillows have already gone flat after being used for such a short time."

"It's all the brains I have."

"Oh? I thought it was the ears," Sesshomaru remarked straight-faced.

"The ears?" Inuyasha asked.

"Such outstanding ears must surely add a good deal of weight to your head. That must be the cause of your excessively weighty head."

Inuyasha's eyes narrowed, and he raised his head, before swiftly throwing the pillow into Sesshomaru's face.

Sesshomaru could honestly not recall a single occasion in his seven hundred years of life when he had been smacked in the face with a fluffy pillow. So he did what someone who has never been hit by a pillow does: he hit back with his own.

It was a novel sensation too for Inuyasha, because he had never had proper playmates as a child.

"Oof," the half-demon gasped as the feather-filled fabric flew into his face. He clutched the pillow that had smothered him and peered out over it at Sesshomaru, wide-eyed, ears twitching. "You hit me."

"Well, _you_ hit _me_."

"And you made fun of my ears." Twitch, twitch. He made a sniffling sound and fell back onto the bed, covering his entire face and head with the pillow.

Sesshomaru crawled over the covers to him and tried to pry the pillow out of his hands. "You're not really upset, are you?" he asked, slightly concerned, wondering if the ears were such a sensitive point with his brother that he might have wounded him again.

He managed to lift one end of the pillow off Inuyasha's face – and found the boy grinning cheekily at him. "Got you worried there, didn't I?" he asked.

"Little brat. Your ears are beautiful and you know it."

Sesshomaru leaned over and kissed each of the furry ears. He wondered as he drew back if he would see panic, disgust or desire in Inuyasha's eyes, but when he looked into his face, the boy was perfectly calm, and his scent had no traces of fear in it. Sesshomaru could detect a hint of desire, but it was easy to mistake playful excitement for another kind of interest, and besides, his outward appearance gave no suggestion of arousal.

Sighing inwardly, Sesshomaru curled himself around Inuyasha and held him like a pup until the boy felt ready to sleep, at which point he heartlessly slipped out of his elder brother's arms, said goodnight and left the room for his own bed.

Into which Sesshomaru was still not invited.


	27. Unwelcome Advances

Naraku, unnatural lord of the spider demons, gazed with hungry garnet eyes upon the great castle of the dog-demon king as he flew through the air towards it, escorted by the demon lord's strongest guards. He coveted that enormous castle and everything in it, in particular the beautiful demon lord himself, who had evaded his clutches for too long now. He coveted the resources and the power that would be his if he conquered this land.

He coveted a hundred other things too, endlessly, and for that, he blamed his predecessor, Onigumo. The old spider demon, whose evil magic and natural bent for violence and desirable things had seen him consume human and demon souls by the hundreds like death at a feast, taking whatever possessions or persons he wanted by stealth or by force, had perished at the hands of Sesshomaru's father in the great battle.

Somehow, out of the cauldron of magic and souls, rage and lust which made Onigumo what he was, Naraku had emerged whole and powerful, a full-grown demon-thing sprung ready-made from the old corpse, recalling memories that were not his own, and hankering after what he did not know he desired. He had the stolen face and primary body of a human prince, the heart of Onigumo, the red eyes and multiple secondary limbs of a spider demon, and the power of a legion of creatures locked within his soul. He had made peace with Sesshomaru, the new demon lord, in tune with the other successors of the old leaders who had turned against the dog demons; but inside, his unnatural heart burned with urges he did not understand.

He carried Onigumo's memories of lust for a beautiful priestess in a village from many hundreds of years ago, and even knew her name – Midoriko – although she had died long before Naraku himself had been created. Onigumo had failed to seize the priestess, having been repelled by the power of the ancient tree sacred to the gods, but had lusted for her ever after.

Because of that pointless lust, he, Naraku, had been born saddled with an inconvenient attraction to beautiful priestesses from the village of the sacred tree. Some fifty-one years ago, he had stolen into Sesshomaru's kingdom and sought out the village, driven by a power he loathed but could not control. There, he had spied the exquisite Kikyo, who was turning fourteen and already as lovely as a starry night. But when he had attempted to rape the girl, the sacred tree had generated a strange and powerful force that repelled him and left his head feeling as if a million thorns were screeching inside his skull, tearing at his brain and shrieking at him like countless shards of broken glass. He had fled far from the village, until he could no longer hear or feel the screaming thorns.

Unfortunately, pretty priestesses were by no means the only things that Onigumo had desired. The insane old spider lord, born a thief, had lusted after power, gold, blood, magic, cunning, males and females of all species, and had contradictorily been attracted to the late dog-demon lord while at the same time feeling murderously jealous of him for having taken two flawless females – one demon and one human – as his mates. As a result, Naraku found himself burdened by a nasty urge to steal, rape or mutilate everything in sight while battling an irresistible attraction to Sesshomaru, who was even more beautiful than his parents, and possessed all that the late demon lord had owned.

The spider lord and his entourage now descended slowly to ground, where they stood in the open field before the castle's grand entrance. Naraku looked up at the towering building before him for the first time in forty years, and felt again the powerful desire to ransack it while claiming it as his own, and to torture and control all who dwelt within its walls.

As they were escorted into the castle through its great entrance hall and gallery towards the throne room, Naraku's heart and mind screamed: _This must be mine, mine, mine!_ His face and outward carriage, though, were the very picture of calmness and composure.

They turned into the throne room, and saw the demon lord and his people standing on the raised, richly carpet-covered platform at the other end. Naraku's heart again shrieked to him to absorb Sesshomaru into his soul and body until he became an integral part of his being. However, as before, his face remained a perfect mask of pleasant serenity.

He strode confidently towards the beautiful Sesshomaru, thinking his unseemly thoughts, until his red eyes caught a glimpse of a stunning creature clad in black and silver, standing beside the demon lord. His hair was as long and snowy as Sesshomaru's, and his eyes as golden, but a perfectly proportioned pair of dog ears crowned his head, and his thick pair of braided sidelocks framed a face that was as open as a child's.

The spider lord shuddered. For once, his unnatural composure cracked as his lips parted and his red eyes flashed. His inner turmoil rose to a crescendo as every fibre of his compound being caught its collective breath, skipped a heartbeat, and demanded in a choral voice of excitement and desire and enraged interest all compacted into one cry: _Ahhhh… who_ is _that?_

…

"Naraku," Sesshomaru said calmly, although he did not at all like the way the spider lord was staring at Inuyasha. "What brings you here? Your letter was vague, to say the least."

"Lord Sesshomaru," Naraku greeted him, turning his eyes back onto him and offering a deep and formal bow which was returned politely but coldly by the demon lord. "It has been much too long since we met in person."

"Perception of time is relative," Sesshomaru replied coolly.

"Icy as ever," Naraku remarked admiringly, taking in the splendid form and features of the dog demon with a long and indecent sweep of his burning eyes. "But you are looking finer than I have ever known you to look, Your Majesty, and that is saying a lot, considering how perfect I thought you forty years ago."

"Flattering words, Naraku, but if you would declare the intention behind this visit, we would know how to make your stay a better one – surely you would want me to be the best host I can reasonably be?" Sesshomaru asked.

"You are a perfect host merely by permitting me to stand in your presence," said Naraku smoothly. "Please allow me to express my appreciation for your kind reception and hospitality with a few humble gifts."

Naraku nodded to his entourage, and stepped aside to let three richly dressed demons lead his attendants forward with chests and wrapped packages of the finest spider-woven silk, exotic fruit from the southern lands, and cleverly crafted decorative vessels of fired earth, beautifully painted by nimble spider limbs.

"Thank you for your generous gifts," Sesshomaru said. "You should not have gone to the trouble of preparing them."

"No effort is too much for Lord Sesshomaru," Naraku said with a smile. The spider lord then indicated the three richly attired demons who had presented the most elaborately wrapped packages at the head of the line of attendants. "May I present my children, my lord? I don't believe you have met _all_ of them?"

From a window in the throne room, Inuyasha had seen them flying down to the castle, and had already thought from the look of them in the air that they were a motley assortment of beings. He had never seen anyone's children looking so unlike one another, and their parent.

"Kanna, my eldest… _remaining_ child," said Naraku, indicating a small female demon dressed entirely in white who looked very much like an innocuous little girl, but whose hair and skin were as colourless as death, and whose eyes were twin black chasms of emptiness.

"Hakudoshi, the next-eldest who is still with us," he continued, introducing a demon who looked like a youth with white hair and calculating violet eyes, who had ridden a flying steed through the air.

"Byakuya, my last," Naraku stated, gesturing to a demon with smooth black hair pulled away into a neat tail from an apparently untroubled and good-natured face. He was the one Inuyasha had seen riding on a magical paper crane, which had also carried the small-sized Kanna. Although Naraku introduced Byakuya as his youngest, he looked in fact like the eldest of the three.

Inuyasha looked from Naraku to the trio behind him and back at Naraku again, and still could see no family resemblance whatsoever between any of them. Naraku – with his long, black hair falling in untidy waves about his neck and shoulders, his sly red eyes and the way he had flown through the air within a translucent forcefield of his own power, his stiff and elaborate purple-and-gold attire barely moving in the wind as he travelled – was nothing like his children.

Sesshomaru gave a scarcely perceptible nod to each of the three before he put a hand lightly on Inuyasha's back and said to Naraku: "My brother, Inuyasha. I believe you are already acquainted with Minister Atsushi and Minister Ryota."

Naraku bowed to Inuyasha, devouring his form with his eyes again, and nodded to the two ministers. "Your brother? How wonderful. I am honoured to meet His Highness, and to renew my acquaintance with the good ministers."

"I have no doubt that you are," Sesshomaru said dryly. "Now, what brings you here?"

"My dearest Lord Sesshomaru, the purpose of my visit is primarily to renew the excellent ties I have always had with you, and to clear up, in person, the _misunderstanding_ that appears to have arisen between us with regard to the outlaws on the border. I sincerely regret to learn that your kingdom seems to believe that those outlaws inhabiting the region between our lands originate from my kingdom. I am quite sure that they are outcasts who belong _nowhere_."

"Then we must find a way to deal with them – it is no good letting outlaws wander freely about like homeless pets forced to turn feral," Sesshomaru replied.

"Indeed. I also wish to say how very sorry I was to hear that parts of Your Majesty's kingdom were affected by floods in recent days, and to offer any help to the people that I can."

"It is most kind of you to sympathise with my people," Sesshomaru said. "I thank you for your good thoughts. Shall we discuss these matters over lunch? Let us adjourn to the dining hall."

Naraku and his entourage bowed to express their thanks for Sesshomaru's hospitality, and let themselves be shown out of the throne room and into the dining hall nearby.

Over a fine spread of meat, seafood, eggs and fruit that the spider demons seemed happy enough to consume, Sesshomaru neatly deflected Naraku's reiterated offer of help for the flood victims by revealing that help was already abundantly forthcoming from various tribes. He diplomatically made it out to seem that the most generous thing the spider lord could do would be to "save" the bandits in the wilderness by channelling his resources towards rehabilitating them.

"I trust that with your generous charity and considerable means, those bandits could become productive members of demon society again, and cease to make trouble for all the lands bordering that stretch of neutral wilderness. That will benefit all parties, and I am sure you will find ways to make them useful within your kingdom. They are, after all, spider demons, and would integrate well with the people of your lands, far better than trying to build a fresh existence from scratch in other kingdoms."

"What an excellent suggestion, Lord Sesshomaru," Naraku cried a little too enthusiastically, concealing his true thoughts on the matter under a practised façade of pleasure, while his three children eyed him warily. He turned to Inuyasha, who was facing him across the table, and said: "Your brother is a wonderful king. You must admire him immensely."

"He is like no one else," Inuyasha remarked, sufficiently vaguely to leave Naraku unsatisfied with the answer, yet unable to reasonably demand further detail.

"I understand that you have lived away from this castle for most of your life, Your Highness," the spider lord remarked. "I wonder that Lord Sesshomaru would dare to leave so beautiful a brother of his unguarded for so many years. If you were mine, I would certainly not let you out of my sight for even one second."

"Good thing I'm not, then, or you'd have trouble keeping an eye on anything else, and it looks like you've already got too much on your plate," Inuyasha said bluntly.

Inuyasha felt something tickling his left leg under the table, insinuating its way into his boot and trying to creep up his trouser leg. It couldn't be Sesshomaru – not when Sesshomaru was closer to his right leg – and it assuredly was not the very proper Minister Ryota to his left either.

The prince carefully lowered his head as if to eat, but used the movement as cover to sniff the air under the table. He caught the sharp scent of Naraku closer than he ought to be. He remembered from the dinner conversation last night that the spider lord had extendable secondary limbs which acted like tentacles, and realised that one of those appendages must have made its way under the broad wooden dining table to molest his ankle and try to stroke its way up his leg.

He was sure of it when he looked back up at Naraku to see the spider lord leering at him over the rim of his drinking glass as the tentacle stroked his skin.

Subtly and inconspicuously so that even Minister Ryota noticed nothing as he conversed with Hakudoshi, Inuyasha continued eating with his right hand, while with his left he slipped Tetsusaiga downwards through his sash, sheath and all. With a swift but barely noticeable movement of his left arm, he stabbed the sheath of Bokuseno's wood hard and painfully into the unwelcome tentacle.

He had the satisfaction of feeling the limb withdraw in a second from him, and the even greater satisfaction of seeing a lightning flash of pain streak across Naraku's face, a brief convulsion that the spider lord quelled with some difficulty in order to answer Sesshomaru in a normal tone of voice when the demon lord asked him pointedly if he approved of the taste of the marinated octopus, and whether he would like a fresh piece of skewered tentacle from the plate.

….

"If he slips another appendage up your leg again, I will cut off every one of those slimy things, along with his hands and feet," Sesshomaru said grimly to Inuyasha once they had the privacy of the royal wing, to which they had retired after lunch, while Naraku and his entourage were shown to the guest wing.

"It wasn't a problem. I got him good and proper," Inuyasha said.

"I know you can handle many situations without help, but you must be careful with Naraku. His tentacles are venomous – the fact that he reached underneath the table and touched you with the tip of one is a serious breach of etiquette. He could have poisoned you. Give me your ankle."

"Huh?" Inuyasha asked, then found himself hopping in surprise on his right leg when Sesshomaru bent down and lifted up his left leg, pushed the trousers up and the soft black boots down, and examined his skin to ensure that it was not broken.

"Sesshomaru!" Inuyasha yelped in protest. "I'm not hurt at all. I would have managed just fine even if he _had_ poisoned me. You don't have to worry."

"He had no right to touch you at all. I have no doubt that you would survive any toxins he could inject into you, but it would be an unpleasant road to recovery. Kagura took months to heal from a single massive dose of his poison, even though she was supposed to be relatively immune to it as she was born of his flesh," the elder brother said, wiping the younger one's ankle with the trailing end of his sash as if to remove all traces of Naraku's contamination from his skin.

"I'm stronger than any wind demoness," Inuysha assured his brother, as he relinquished his leg at last.

"I don't want any harm to come to you," the demon lord said.

"I know," Inuyasha said.

The half-demon stepped up to his brother and rubbed the side of his head against his upper arm. Sesshomaru's protectiveness of him, and the way he had so deftly handled Naraku's subtly dangerous words and behaviour over lunch without losing his temper left Inuyasha quite impressed. It made him feel unexpectedly affectionate towards his brother.

He wished that Sesshomaru would suggest that they snuggle up for an afternoon nap in his room, but that was hardly likely, not when he had work to do and correspondence to tackle before they would have to begin their afternoon schedule of formal meetings and discussions with Naraku.

True enough, the demon lord kissed his brother on the top of his head and said to him: "Rest in your room now. I have work to do. You'd better check on your attendant as well."

Natsumi had not left Inuyasha's room since Naraku's arrival, for the prince had told her and the guards that she should remain within the royal wing for her own safety. The guards and the attendant stationed at the end of the passageway were also told that Natsumi was to have all her meals delivered to her in this room while Naraku was here, and that only the racoon demon Kazuki, from the kitchens, was allowed to bring them to her.

Natsumi had been calm when Inuyasha told her in the morning that Naraku was expected within the castle grounds by noon. She had remained steady as she dressed him in formal attire appropriate for a prince who was to meet a head of state. Although he asked her if she wished to talk about it, she had said little, and only reminded him that he would be late for breakfast if they chatted on about inconsequential things.

Now, she rose from a couch at the far end of the room as Inuyasha entered, and hurried over to help him remove his formal outer robe.

"Are you all right?" Inuyasha asked her.

"Please don't worry about me," she answered. "I am perfectly well."

"You weren't well during his last visit, from what I hear, so don't mind me if I'm concerned," Inuyasha said firmly. "You wouldn't say anything this morning, but I want to be sure now that you _are_ all right."

As Natsumi walked over to a stand to drape his outer robe carefully over it, she began to explain her background in her soft voice: "I suppose you have the right to know, as I am your attendant. I will tell you. Forty years ago, I panicked when Naraku arrived for a visit that I did not know was planned until he appeared at the castle gates. No one – not even Minister Atsushi, who saved my life – knew at the time that Naraku was my former master, so no one knew that I ought to be warned about his visit. I had previously only told Minister Atsushi that I had belonged to a cruel spider demon, without naming him. After the head of the housekeeping staff found me hiding in the dragon stables, Minister Atsushi spoke to me in person, and that was when he learnt the whole truth. I won't panic again this time, I promise. I'll simply avoid Naraku. Remaining in this wing seems like the best way not to see him while he is here, as there is no way that he would be permitted into this part of the castle."

"How did you become his slave?" Inuyasha asked carefully. "I would like to know what happened, if you're willing to tell me."

Natsumi took Inuyasha's inner robe from him and handed him more comfortable wear, then said in a soft but steady voice: "My parents, and three-quarters of my clan, were killed by a group of ogres who invaded our tribe's territory at about the time of the great war in which your father perished. I was only a child. In my terror and in the chaos after I saw my parents die protecting me, I somehow became separated from the surviving members of my clan."

She made Inuyasha sit down in his usual seat before the tall mirror so that she could groom his hair, then continued with her tale: "In those days, spider-demon slave traders roamed freely across various lands. An opportunistic group of them watching the slaughter caught me, carried me across two borders, and sold me to a spider-demon family. That family treated me reasonably well for almost a hundred years. If I did the chores, looked after the children and cleaned their home well, they gave me no trouble. But when I matured, the male demon started taking an interest in me, so his mate sold me off to another slave trader, who sent me to Naraku's castle. I discovered very quickly that Naraku enjoyed drawing blood from his slaves, and even from his children, whom I later learnt he had created for himself through magical means. I was beaten and cut with whips and blades almost every day for nearly forty years, purely for his amusement."

Inuyasha's eyes flashed with anger and tears. Natsumi saw his face in the mirror while she was undoing the braids she had plaited his sidelocks into, and shook her head.

"Don't be upset for me, Your Highness. It's over. I survived. Many others did not. I thought I was in hell and wished I had died with my parents, but every time I saw yet another slave's corpse tossed out with the waste, a small spark in me told me to be grateful that I still had life in me. Sometimes I was burnt with hot irons, or raped, but not as often as others who responded to Naraku and his artificial family in ways that excited them more. I was probably beaten and mutilated more than the other slaves because I was so quiet and reacted less than others. But that also saved my life in the end, because Naraku became rather bored with me. Thus, he did not notice when Kagura, his eldest daughter who was turning against him and who had the most compassion for me, smuggled me out of his castle along with a group of slaves he had decided to sell. I was sick at the time. Some of my wounds were infected – an unusual thing to happen to a demon, but those wounds had been repeatedly inflicted on me, and would not close. I was dying. The traders were about to discard me in the wilderness between Naraku's land and Lord Sesshomaru's kingdom before they crossed the border."

"Those slave-trading scum are just as bad as those who buy other living beings and mistreat them," Inuyasha snapped bitterly. "They don't give a shit what happens to the people they sell, do they?"

"They do not. But Minister Atsushi was at the border, and he took pity on me. He thought he would be buying me only to let me die in peace and some comfort in the barracks of the fortress at the southern border – but I survived. His own healer attended to me, and I pulled through. He then took me to his home, where his servants cared for me, and slowly, over the next few years, my wounds began to heal. Once those wounds were no longer being reopened daily, my healing powers returned. After five years of good treatment in his household, my scars were gone. I shall always be grateful to Minister Atsushi for his kindness, and to Lord Sesshomaru for paying me wages, and never hitting me once in all my fifty-five years of serving him. I had heard from others that Lord Sesshomaru could be cruel, and I wondered why Minister Atsushi was sending me here after all I had been through. But I discovered for myself that if Lord Sesshomaru had any cruelty in him, it was mostly gone by the time I came here. I found him demanding, and hard on those who opposed him, but fair. I can barely express to you how happy I am to be working here. The only danger now is that if Naraku sees me and recognises me, he may try to reclaim me as a runaway slave."

Inuyasha could not help his tears, although she had told him not to cry for her. He turned around in his seat and looked into her face, saying fiercely: "One of these days I'm going to kill Naraku – then he will never again be able to do such things to anyone, and you need never fear seeing him, ever. If you'd told me this in the morning, I would have beaten him up in the throne room right in front of everyone! When I see him at dinner, I'm going to –"

"No, Your Highness," Natsumi said anxiously. "You must behave towards him as Lord Sesshomaru does. Everyone knows what Naraku is like, how dishonourable he is, and how he abuses his people – but behaving badly to him only excites him, when he sees that he's getting a rise out of you. _Trust me_ with regard to that. I should know."

"But I can't just sit there and be polite to a monster like that!" Inuyasha protested.

"Yes, you can," Natsumi stressed. "Because you know that it only makes him happy to see others agitated in his presence. Be calm. Never show disgust or fear in his presence. Take your cue from Lord Sesshomaru. His Majesty knows best how to leave Naraku disappointed. Follow his lead. If you lose your temper and offend Naraku too publicly, he will lose face and it could strain the peace between lands. You are a prince – it will not be a quarrel between private individuals, but between two states."

"Bloody beast. I hope he starts a fight so that I'll have a good reason for bludgeoning him."

"While that would be nice, it would be very unlikely," Natsumi said, turning the prince around again in his seat and brushing his hair straight. "Naraku is usually too smooth a politician to display his anger openly."

"Well, one of these days he's going to make a wrong move, and then I'll get him."

"There are other ways to protect people besides using violence," Natsumi responded firmly. "This world sees more than enough violence. We could do with less of it."

"Sometimes, violence is the only thing some creatures understand."

"Perhaps. But that also means dealing with them on _their_ terms, and not yours."

"Heh," Inuyasha huffed grimly. "How do you know that violence isn't the only thing _I_ understand, and that I'd be doing it on _my_ terms too?"

Natsumi shook her head and smiled. "Because I think I know you better than that, Your Highness. And I know you _are_ better than that. Now lie down and get some rest. I will be at the other end of your room – I won't be in your way."

She returned to the couch behind a screen, giving her privacy while leaving Inuyasha to rest in his bed and think up ways to get at Naraku, the touch of whose tentacle he could still feel lingering like a bad memory on his flesh.


	28. Indecent Proposals

Although the sight of Naraku made Inuyasha seethe when they met again in the late afternoon, the prince remembered Natsumi's advice and followed Sesshomaru's lead. As he observed his brother, his admiration for him grew. Sesshomaru had ways of putting Naraku down without resorting to outright insults, and knew how to keep him from getting the reactions he desired without appearing to deliberately thwart him.

Inuyasha quickly became bored with the formal discussions that were on the table for that day. Naraku, Sesshomaru and the ministers were clearly going over old ground covered a dozen times before, judging from the fact that they seemed to Inuyasha to be starting in the middle of an exchange whose opening he had not been party to.

They touched on dull details concerning Naraku's borders creeping deeper into the neutral zone (which the spider lord denied), Sesshomaru's dragon-mounted guards crossing neutral airspace (which the dog-demon king said was occasionally necessary when the bandit attacks got out of hand), the welfare of spider demons residing in the Western kingdom (good, apparently), and a host of trading issues that almost put Inuyasha to sleep with their endless talk about imports, exports, deficits and surpluses.

The prince stayed awake only because Hakudoshi, Naraku's second child, stared intently at him out of mocking purple eyes; and Byakuya, the youngest, kept smiling at him in a manner that looked so genuinely friendly and yet knowing, that it was rather disturbing.

Inuyasha's ears pricked up only when he caught some none-too-subtle statements by Naraku expressing a hope that he could form an alliance with Sesshomaru through a mating union between the dog-demon lord and the spider demon's daughter, Kanna.

"She may look like a child, but I can assure you she is not," Naraku spoke of the demoness as if she were not present. "She has the full range of… _capabilities_ that any mature demon possesses." Coming out of his mouth, the words sounded positively indecent.

Inuyasha glanced at the girl. She was seated on a chair, her little feet far off the floor, staring vacantly into a mirror she held in her lap. The mirror, he had gathered, was a weapon; but in a formal meeting with another state, the use of a weapon without extreme provocation was strictly forbidden. Inuyasha only hoped that the demon girl was even aware of such etiquette.

"You are far too generous to offer me your daughter as a mate," Sesshomaru said blandly. "The Lady Kanna can undoubtedly choose a mate far better suited to her preferences than myself. In my tribe, we have by and large chosen mates from within our own clan, so I regret to say that I cannot consider your offer."

"Oh, but your honoured sire himself chose a second mate who was not only from outside his family clan, but even from outside his own species, as the very existence of Lord Sesshomaru's beloved brother proves. Perhaps he was setting a good example for his son?" Naraku suggested.

"My father chose his human mate for love," Sesshomaru stated frankly. "There he set us all an excellent example. However, where mating unions are discussed like business deals and love has no place in the matter, then the old traditions of making matches within the clan are expected to hold true in my tribe."

"Most unfortunate," Naraku sighed dramatically. "Kanna would make you a highly devoted consort, and her tiny body can do things that less… petite ones could not do quite so effectively. It is a pity that I am no longer able to offer you my eldest daughter, Kagura, who I am sure would have been more to your taste, as she is with us no more. If I believed rumours, I might be led to think that I would have no need to offer her to you even if she were still with us, as some lie that you already have her! Quite absurd, the things some demons say."

"The words of some demons are certainly never to be trusted," Sesshomaru replied coolly.

"I would even venture to propose myself as a match for you," Naraku continued smoothly. "Except that we have explored that option before and found it… not viable – can I put it that way? I had previously hoped that the obstacles we faced before could be overcome, but when you state so plainly that you will either mate within your tribe, or for love, then I must conclude from such a declaration that you are unable to love me."

"You may put it in any way that pleases you," Sesshomaru answered.

"Ah, I see the prince staring at me in disbelief!" Naraku cried, his red eyes sliding over to Inuyasha. "Perhaps His Highness is too young to know that matings between male demons are not as unviable as he might think – there are always ways to create, through magic, children that share the blood of both their male parents, so that their bloodline can continue. Lord Sesshomaru presumably finds me unsuitable for _other_ reasons. Do we have any alternatives here? I don't suppose Lord Sesshomaru would consider me as a potential mate, not for himself, but for his beloved brother? I understand that he is not fully of age yet, but he is completely physically mature, which means that he can take a mate, or be taken as one."

Sesshomaru's golden eyes glinted dangerously, but his voice was as calm as before when he gave his response: "I have decided for some time now that my brother should be free to choose his own mate, and not be offered to anyone as if he were an object to be bought and sold. And in my family, we strongly believe in creating our children through _natural_ means and not through magic – although I understand that cultures and practices differ widely, and others may find acceptable what we do not."

"Such a pity," Naraku sighed again. "His Highness looks as if he would make an excellent consort to a lord or a king – but if your family believes only in _natural_ offspring, then there is no hope that His Highness would ever have children with a male companion."

Inuyasha's eyebrows had first ascended almost to his hairline when Naraku brought up the notion of creating children artificially, then they had descended all the way down to hood his bright golden gaze when the spider lord proposed him as a mate. With words fired by anger but a stillness of body echoing Sesshomaru's calmness, Inuyasha shot back in a purposely naïve tone of voice: "Great pantheon of gods have mercy – are you seriously having _that_ much trouble finding a female to spawn your sprogs?"

Minister Atsushi hid a smile, Minister Ryota held his breath, and Sesshomaru's expression did not change. Hakudoshi frowned, while Byakuya smiled on, and Kanna did not appear to have heard a word.

Naraku, utterly taken aback, stared at Inuyasha while smiling mechanically, until he finally summoned a short laugh and remarked: "The young prince clearly has little experience with political matings and other unions. Such naïvete. Is your Majesty really set on not allowing me the consolation of taking his brother into my household after having refused me in so many other ways? There is a great deal I could teach such an innocent child."

"Inuyasha, might you have any interest in becoming Lord Naraku's consort?" was Sesshomaru's ice-smooth question to his brother.

"No, my lord," Inuyasha replied, giving his brother a flawlessly demure bow of his head and neck from where he sat beside him. "I am honoured that any demon lord would find me of interest as a consort, but I am determined to choose a companion only for love."

"Then it is out of the question," Sesshomaru said, turning to Naraku with a forbidding look in his eyes.

"Pity," was the spider lord's simple response, accompanied by yet another exaggerated sigh.

They returned to other dull topics after that, and continued in that vein until the business of the day was over, and they were ready to move on to the pleasures of the evening feast.

Dinner itself was a fairly grand but uneventful affair, with the ministers and their highest-ranking staff keeping Naraku's three children and aides occupied and entertained, while Sesshomaru and Inuyasha conversed with Naraku about a wide range of matters that seemed superficial and yet ripe with underlying meaning.

Only when they moved from the dining hall to the event hall was there any trouble. The hall was decorated with tall plants and bold, translucent drapes, but laid out with low seats and cushions for comfort, so they could recline against them while watching entertainment provided by both Naraku's entourage and Sesshomaru's musicians. The plants and drapes sectioned up the hall into a number of nooks, conferring upon each space an air of privacy.

Sesshomaru, Inuyasha, Naraku and Minister Atsushi were in one niche, facing the musicians across the hall. Minister Ryota, Hakudoshi and Byakuya were in another nook. Kanna sought a different corner for herself and her two female attendants. Naraku's other aides and attendants found their own corners, in the company of Sesshomaru's and the ministers' aides and other staff. Castle servants moved about the hall constantly, serving finger desserts, wine and flower tea.

In their niche, Naraku called for a glass of wine and turned to Inuyasha, who was leaning against a cushion and talking to Minister Atsushi.

"Your Highness," Naraku said, holding out the wine to Inuyasha. "You drank absolutely nothing at dinner – you must drink some wine with me – it can't be too much to ask, after you and your brother refused me so absolutely."

Minister Atsushi was quick to respond in his steady way, saying: "Lord Naraku, His Highness is too young to have consumed much wine, and I understand that he is unaccustomed to the taste of it."

"Come now, Sesshomaru," Naraku said laughingly to the demon lord. "I know very well that _you_ were drinking wine at your brother's age – isn't it time for him to acquire a taste for it?"

"My brother and I are very different," Sesshomaru replied, watching the situation keenly. Atsushi could tell that the demon lord was carefully sniffing the air around them to see if he could smell anything wrong with the wine that Naraku was offering the boy.

Naraku apparently picked up on that too, for he commented: "I haven't poisoned the wine or the goblet, I assure you."

Inuyasha did not want things to get unnecessarily awkward. He reasoned that if Sesshomaru was drinking wine at his age, then he could learn to like it too, so he reached out and accepted the goblet as graciously as he could.

"Thank you, Lord Naraku," he said in a neutral voice, although he itched to punch him in the nose. "I am an uncultured half-demon, but I am prepared to learn what my brother was able to appreciate at my age."

He took a sip of the wine, watched by Naraku, Atsushi and Sesshomaru. He was not used to the strong taste and smell of such a beverage, but it was not intolerable. Besides, it was top-quality wine from Sesshomaru's cellars.

He had tasted common wine before while living in the village. The village men _would_ insist on treating him like an adult – after all, they had known him for decades – and often tried to get him to join them in their evening drinking sessions behind the priestesses' backs. Fortunately for the priestesses' peace of mind, and Inuyasha's well-being, he had found that he disliked the flavour and effects of alcoholic drink, and generally declined by running away from his village friends after their evening meals and taking to the trees where they could not follow him.

"There, that's not so hard, is it?" Naraku asked. "Your brother has some excellent wine here – so excellent that merely a taste of it might be enough to make one fall in love."

Naraku was making it fairly obvious that his remark was intended to cover both the wine and the prince.

Inuyasha took another sip, but turned his eyes onto Sesshomaru instead, and drew patience and strength from him. But to his surprise and displeasure, when he lowered the goblet from his lips, Naraku placed a caressing hand over the goblet, covering Inuyasha's own fingers, and tilted the vessel towards himself to look at how much liquid remained in it.

"Hardly touched," was the spider lord's remark as the tips of his fingers stroked the back of Inuyasha's hand. "How cautious you are – perhaps it will not be as easy as I had hoped it would be to interest you in anything new."

Sesshomaru reached out swiftly and grasped the goblet, which he firmly but elegantly extracted from his brother's and Naraku's fingers, enabling Inuyasha to slip his hand out of Naraku's.

"Naraku," Sesshomaru said in a sharper tone than he had hitherto used on the spider lord. "My brother is not yet mature." He set the goblet down beside him, out of Naraku's reach, pausing in his speech for a moment before continuing in a more even voice: "It is well past his usual bedtime, and sipping wine to which he is unaccustomed will hardly help him to stay awake."

Inuyasha scarcely needed another hint. Naturally honest as he was, and more used to making a point with his blunt speech, claws and fangs than with sophisticated talk, he was out of his depth amidst such verbal and socially political manoeuvrings. He felt more uncertain by the second how he was supposed to respond to anything at all, and was on the verge of letting his fists do the talking. So he rose gratefully and bowed to his brother, Naraku and Minister Atsushi, to take his leave.

Sesshomaru stood up with him and said to the assembled party: "I shall return once I have seen my brother to his room. Please carry on and enjoy the entertainment and wine."

The demon lord and his brother did not speak until they were safely within the corridor of the royal wing, at which point Sesshomaru said: "You did well, Inuyasha. I am proud of you."

"Did well?" Inuyasha scowled. "I was completely lost. I had no idea what to do. If you hadn't defended me so, I'd have been totally adrift and probably done something stupid like swipe off his ugly face with my claws."

"You were perfect," Sesshomaru said, taking his upper arms in his hands and looking him full in the face. "I could not have asked for more from you, on your very first day of interacting with such a tricky guest."

"Tricky? He's disgusting. I don't know how you can let him talk on and on in his filthy way."

"Unless there are outright hostilities between two lands, this is the way it is at such meetings."

"How do you put up with it?"

"I couldn't in my youth – Father was always swooping in and extracting me from one faux pas after the other, before I offended allies and enemies alike unthinkingly," Sesshomaru revealed, taking Inuyasha's hand and almost unconsciously wiping it with his sleeve where Naraku had touched him. "But I learnt much from watching him over the years. And watching my mother, of course – she was even more deft than Father when it came to difficult social situations and twisted politics. You will learn too."

"What if I don't want to?" Inuyasha asked, turning his huge pair of eyes upward to gaze at his brother. "What if all this isn't right for me?"

"Then that will be your decision, and I shall respect it. But you won't know what you can learn to be good at until you give it time. Until then, however, may I say how much I appreciate your innocence and honesty?"

The corners of Inuyasha's mouth twitched into a little smile, then he frowned as he said: "I don't like the way he talks as if there were something between the two of you – well, I mean, I don't know if there was in the past, but he goes on as if there was still something."

"It is nothing more than his wishful thinking, founded on incidents that I would prefer not to dwell on. You should go to bed now. I must return to the event hall."

Inuyasha did not know why he said what he said next, but he found himself blurting out impulsively: "Do you really have to go back there?"

Sesshomaru searched his face curiously before answering: "Yes, I should return to the hall and continue to entertain the guests. Would you rather I didn't?"

"No – of course not!" Inuyasha said hastily. "You should go back. I don't know why I said that. I must be drunk – keh, no, that's a dumb thing to say as well. Two sips wouldn't make me drunk. I guess… it's just that I never knew a mere social gathering could feel so dangerous…"

"You find it bewildering because it is new to you. It is a more subtle setting than a battlefield, but in many ways it is not that different. I shall be back upstairs once I am done below."

Sesshomaru kissed Inuyasha on the forehead and saw him to his room door, then left the royal wing.

…

As Inuyasha slipped into the hot, welcoming bath Natsumi had prepared for him, he thought about Naraku's weird children and the strangely loathsome yet hypnotic spider lord. He scrubbed extra hard at his right hand with his washcloth, to further erase the feel of Naraku's touch from his skin.

When he emerged from the bath at last, he pulled on his sleepwear, left the bathroom and sat down on his carved wooden stool as always to let the racoon girl dry and comb his hair.

"Naraku's icky," he pronounced his verdict on the spider lord.

"He is outwardly charming, but once you know how cruel he can be, no amount of his charm and stolen good looks can disguise his nature," Natsumi said.

"Stolen?"

"It is said that Onigumo, his predecessor, stole and absorbed the body and soul of a handsome human prince. Although Onigumo himself did not utilise that body, it seems that when Naraku was created, that was the primary body he took."

"Yuck," Inuyasha said, sticking his tongue out. "What a creepy creature. I hate the slimy way he talks to Sesshomaru – as if he had some kind of claim on his interest and affection."

"Well, Naraku and Lord Sesshomaru do go a long way back," Natsumi revealed. "Naraku professed friendship for Lord Sesshomaru mere minutes after he emerged from Onigumo's remains. Lord Sesshomaru had no iron-clad reason for refusing his friendship then, from what I understand – I don't know all that much, but one hears things after being enslaved there for decades and working here for another few decades. I only know that Naraku was keen on forming a very intimate alliance with Lord Sesshomaru, but was rebuffed, at which point he attempted to force the issue, but by what means I do not know."

Inuyasha did not like the sound of that.

When Natsumi was done with his hair, he briefly considered the logistics and implications of keeping his female attendant in his room all night. Having lived with Kikyo and Kaede for so many years, and internalised their considerations with regard to having a male sharing their hut, he was more conscious than full demons would be about sharing a room with a female who was not a mate or relative. Natsumi herself was unconcerned, being a demon who was well accustomed to demon ways; but Inuyasha put himself into Kazuki's place and reasoned that he would not like to have his lover spending all night in the same bedroom as another male.

He briefly considered telling Natsumi that she could use his mother's bedroom. However, he was not sure that Sesshomaru would like it if an attendant was permitted to occupy an unused room in the royal wing as if she were a member of the family. So he told her to rest here, while he would sleep in Sesshomaru's room.

However, when he lay down in his brother's bed, it was to toss and turn for an hour. The bed was comfortable, but his mind was racing with all that he had seen, heard and learnt in the course of the day.

All the talk about Naraku's ambitions of matching himself or one of his children to Sesshomaru disturbed him. Sesshomaru having one of those strange creatures as a mate seemed utterly wrong. Naraku's creepy behaviour also plagued his mind – insinuating a tentacle down his boot, proposing himself as a mate, touching his hand over the wine goblet… _yuck_ , thought the prince. At least Sesshomaru had been direct about his lust for him instead of engaging in under-the-table manoeuvres with weird appendages and sneakily trying to get him drunk.

Wait a minute… it wasn't that he had _enjoyed_ Sesshomaru's attention or anything, just that it was better than Naraku's freakish actions – no, _better_ wasn't quite the right word – it was… _different_ … or was it in fact better…?

Turning over in Sesshomaru's bed for the thirtieth time since lying down in it, Inuyasha buried his face in one of the pillows, taking a deep sniff of the demon lord's scent. All he could think was that it was a nice scent, although _nice_ was not really an appropriate word for Sesshomaru. It was a powerful and familiar scent, intoxicating and pleasing to him, a little like his own, but different enough to be interesting.

He sat up and swung his feet over the edge of the bed, possessed by the urge to see Sesshomaru. He was wearing only his sleepwear, so he pulled on Sesshomaru's dressing gown before leaving the room. The guards must think his behaviour very strange, leaving his own bedroom while there was a pretty female attendant in it and seeking his brother's empty room, then leaving that too and heading out of the royal wing in his bed clothes and the demon lord's dressing gown which was too big for him.

But these guards must have seen it all, considering Sesshomaru's two hundred years of debauchery.

He made his way past the attendant on duty at the end of the passageway and down the stairs, which were guarded at their top and bottom. To the servants on night duty, he presented an oddly clad, barefooted figure lost in an over-large gown as he wandered through the grand corridors of the ground floor towards the event hall, which was situated towards the front of the castle, beside the dining hall.

It had been close to two hours since he had left the hall. Surely the gathering had dispersed by now, so why wasn't Sesshomaru back upstairs yet? It was hard for him to track Sesshomaru's scent because it was all over the castle, but he could smell Naraku all right. The spider lord was definitely still in the hall. Guards stood before the large, open doorway, but he shook his head at them to tell them not to announce him.

The guests were gone; even the servers and entertainers were gone. The plates and drinking vessels had been cleared away. Everyone had left, except for two individuals: Naraku was here, and Sesshomaru's scent was stronger now, meaning that he too was here. The many drapes and tall plants helped to conceal Inuyasha as he entered, and Sesshomaru's thick dressing gown smothered his scent.

It was never Inuyasha's intention to eavesdrop. He had thought to walk in and see if it was an appropriate time to go up to Sesshomaru to ask why he was taking so long. However, the very first thing he heard when he stepped in made him hide himself, for it declared plainly that he was walking in on a very private moment.

"You can't have forgotten my embrace," Naraku's soft but clear voice came from within the niche Inuyasha had been in earlier with his brother, Minister Atsushi and their spider guest. "I cannot forget the feel of you enclosed within my limbs, every inch of your skin enfolded in mine –"

"Shut up, Naraku," Sesshomaru's cold, deep voice answered. "Talking about a past incident in an indecent manner only clothes it in a filthy light, but does not magically turn it into something else, however much you might wish it."

"I wanted you – you must have felt through every pore of your flesh how much I wanted to make you an integral part of me – and that has never changed. Do not tell me that you never felt the same way. Perhaps some part of you desires me also. Is that why you are so resistant to the idea of my taking your brother as a mate? Are you jealous of the fact that the pretty half-demon caught my eye today?"

From his hiding place behind a plant, and through the translucent drapes, Inuyasha saw Naraku lift a hand and caress Sesshomaru's face as he spoke – and the movement of a tentacle a little lower down suggested that he was also caressing some other part of Sesshomaru's body. The sight made him ill. Everything that Naraku's words implied launched a sickening roil of emotion in his breast.

Sesshomaru slapped Naraku's tentacle away from his groin and caught his wrist in his hand, forcing it down in a single violent push as he growled menacingly: "Leave my brother out of this, Naraku. If you touch him again, if you speak one more filthy word to him or about him, if you hurt him, I will destroy you so utterly that your artificial children will not find one atom left of you to burn or bury."

"Oh, Sesshomaru – are you protecting him, or trying to keep me to yourself?"

"Keep your delusions to yourself while you are under my roof," Sesshomaru snarled. "Only diplomatic etiquette stops me from ripping your heart out of your false body. If you were not my guest, you would have been dead well before now."

"Come now, diplomatic etiquette alone would never stop someone like you from killing anyone he pleased…"

Inuyasha stepped backwards to get away from the scene. Sesshomaru had shifted position in the course of his conversation with Naraku, and was now able to see the movement that he made from behind the plants and the drapes. For one second, the two brothers locked golden eyes through the leaves and wispy red silk, then Inuyasha turned and strode quickly out of the hall.

In his emotional turmoil, he headed back towards the royal wing without thinking, until he found himself stranded halfway down it, neither wishing to enter his room and disturb Natsumi, nor return to Sesshomaru's room. He could not turn back and go down the stairs either, because he guessed that Sesshomaru was now on his way up. As for entering an unoccupied bedroom purely to leap out of the window, well, that would only startle the guards above and below and create an unnecessary spectacle.

So he stomped all the way down the corridor right past the four room guards as a maelstrom of feelings he could not name swirled chaotically inside him. He strode to the very end of the passageway and entered his father's room.

Of course Sesshomaru would sniff him out here. Inuyasha partly wanted that, because he wanted to hear what Sesshomaru had to say. He partly wanted to avoid it too, because he could not pinpoint what his feelings were, or why he had had such a strong reaction to seeing and hearing Naraku speak with his brother as if they were old lovers. He hated it – _hated_ it – that Naraku had touched Sesshomaru so intimately, but why should he be so upset by that when he knew all along how promiscuously his brother had used his body?

Torn between wanting to know what Sesshomaru's explanation for that scene would be, and wanting to pretend that he had never been there and never seen a thing, the prince paced his father's room frantically as he knew that with each passing moment, Sesshomaru was coming closer and closer to this room.

But he could not organise his thoughts and feelings fast enough, so that when Sesshomaru turned the handle after what felt paradoxically like a swift eternity and stepped into the room, Inuyasha had no words for him, other than the immediate, childish imperative: "Go away."

Sesshomaru closed the door behind him and said softly: "Is that really what you want me to do?"

"Yes," Inuyasha said. But that word was followed by three more, spoken more quietly: "Yes and no."

"Then I'll stay."


	29. In The Night

"You told me that nothing was going on between you and Naraku," Inuyasha said sullenly to Sesshomaru after a few minutes of silence.

They sat on the edge of their father's bed, Inuyasha at the foot and Sesshomaru on one side, but with his body angled towards his younger brother.

"Nothing is going on between me and Naraku – other than a great deal of disdain on my part and delusional hopes on his," Sesshomaru stated. "I will admit that when I set eyes on him for the very first time two hundred years ago, I thought his princely form physically attractive, but his character soon coloured every way in which I perceived him."

"If that's true, then what was all that shit about him embracing you and feeling every part of you and the rest of the fucked-up crap he was spewing?" Inuyasha asked angrily, turning towards his brother with a quick movement that made the too-big, unsecured dressing gown slip off his left shoulder.

"That concerned a past occasion on which he attacked me," Sesshomaru said. "As usual, he has twisted it with words to make it sound like an intimate connection."

"He _attacked_ you?"

"Yes. We fought years ago, when he entered my lands without permission. I smelt him all over the area I was visiting, and I confronted him. I told you before that Onigumo used to absorb bodies and souls into his being when he was alive, to take their power for himself. Naraku was possibly trying to do the same to me when we faced off. He wrapped what felt like a hundred tentacles around me, covering me from head to toe, and tried to make me a part of him. For some reason he seemed to think I would enjoy that."

"What happened then?" Inuyasha asked, voice hushed from relief and residual suspicion, along with a tinge of curiosity, as he untangled his left hand from the folds of the dressing gown.

"He failed," Sesshomaru said simply. "I was too powerful for him to absorb. I broke out and cut his tentacles to smithereens – which, incidentally, is a more or less useless move except that it causes him pain, because those things regenerate in seconds and emit toxic fumes when severed. We exchanged a few more blows. Then he fled into his own lands. After that, he wrote me a rambling letter of apology liberally peppered with indecencies, claiming that he had been driven half-mad over a priestess and had wandered into my kingdom out of an irresistible compulsion to see her. He promised never to do it again. My ministers advised against initiating an unnecessary war that would only bring suffering to the people, especially since the offending party was claiming madness as an excuse for his offensive behaviour. So we went back to the way we were before. He has never tried that move again."

"You have no interest in him as a lover or a mate?" Inuyasha asked for confirmation.

"None whatsoever."

"You weren't jealous of his attention towards me because you wanted him for yourself?"

"No!" Sesshomaru snarled, an unmistakable blaze of anger in his voice. "You heard him say that, did you? I should tear his tongue out! I never wanted any of his filth reaching your ears."

Inuyasha turned his face away, embarrassed to show the relief that he knew must be written all over his features, as he continued to work frantically through the emotions he was feeling inside himself, but which he could not understand.

Softening his voice as he noticed his brother's confusion, Sesshomaru asked: "Why are you upset, Inuyasha? Why were you angry to see us in the event hall?"

"I don't know," the prince murmured.

"Even if there were something between Naraku and myself – and I emphasise that there is not – why _should_ you be upset?"

"Why should I be upset?" Inuyasha echoed, raising his voice. "How can you even ask that? Of course I would be upset! He's evil – he hurt Natsumi so badly – and he's disgusting, underhanded and ignoble, and you're… you're… not."

He got up abruptly and crossed the room to the window, the dressing gown trailing on the floor behind him as it hung off one arm. He shook it off impatiently and pushed the shutters open, wearing only his white sleeping garments. As he looked out into the night, the guards in the field below turned and looked up, startled to see and hear the windows of an unoccupied bedroom flying open at this hour. They looked away only when they saw that it was the prince standing there.

From the bed, Sesshomaru laughed softly and said: "I suppose I ought to be grateful for being described as _not_ evil, disgusting, underhanded and ignoble. More high praise from you."

Inuyasha whipped around to face him, spluttering: "How can you _laugh_ about this? It's not funny. Are you making fun of me?"

"No," Sesshomaru said, but he was laughing softly again, almost helplessly, as he stood up and walked towards his brother.

"Then why are you laughing?"

He turned away again towards the night, but Sesshomaru moved right up behind him and peered round him to look at his face. "I'm laughing because you're actually saying something nice about me, and because you seem to suggest that I am deserving of your respect, after having uttered so many hard words about me only a few days ago."

"Keh," Inuyasha huffed, trying to angle his face away from Sesshomaru's.

"Why are you upset, _really_?"

"I don't know."

"Are you only saying that to brush me off, or do you truly not know?"

"I really don't know, all right?" Inuyasha snapped. "I'm trying to work it out. I only know I got mad when I saw him touching you, and scared at the same time, because I didn't think you would _ever_ let him touch you… I had sudden visions of him as your mate and you with no place for me in your life… and… I don't know, but I've only just got used to the idea of liking the fact that I'm a part of your life, and he had no right to come here and say dirty things to you and me, and if I thought you wanted him too I would just –"

"You would just what?" Sesshomaru prompted quietly.

"I would – I would feel sick."

"Inuyasha," Sesshomaru said curiously. "Are you jealous of Naraku?"

"Jealous of Naraku?" Inuyasha gasped. "Don't be ridiculous. I loathe him – he's revolting and vile and I want to rip his ugly mug off his hideous bones –"

"You _are_ jealous," Sesshomaru said in wonder.

"I'm not –"

But Sesshomaru's arms were going around him from behind, and the demon lord was wrapping him in a tight embrace that was squeezing him breathless. "Naraku is nothing to me, unlike _you_ ," he said.

Inuyasha's heart leaped at those words, but he hid his delight at hearing them by protesting half-heartedly against being squeezed so hard. "Okay, okay, I believe you. Ow…" he said, resting his hands over his brother's. "I think you've squashed my stomach flat already – and my lungs – oof."

"Only because you're so utterly squeezable," Sesshomaru murmured into his ear.

"I'm going to – _ack_ – try and take that as a compliment – gah… can't breathe…"

"I'm sorry," Sesshomaru breathed, relaxing his hold but keeping his long fingers splayed out over the soft white sleepwear covering Inuyasha's chest and belly.

In the stillness that followed, Inuyasha admitted quietly as he stroked the backs of Sesshomaru's hands with his fingertips: "Maybe I _was_ a bit jealous."

Sesshomaru answered with one light kiss on the downy fur of his brother's right ear, then another and another, and moved to the left ear. Inuyasha permitted ten of those slow, sensuous kisses before turning his head slightly to his left, making Sesshomaru uncertain about whether he was trying to get his ears away from his mouth, or just wanting to bring him into view. The boy's scent was a confusing mix of emotions. Sesshomaru leaned forward once more for a closer look at Inuyasha's face to read his actions better, and gently drew his long hair aside. In tandem with his move, Inuyasha tilted his head to the right, exposing the left side of his neck.

Sesshomaru's breath quickened with surprise and arousal. Inuyasha drew the fabric of his night garments off his left shoulder to display more skin, and the demon lord needed no further invitation.

A growl of raw pleasure escaped Sesshomaru's throat as he eagerly pressed his mouth to his brother's tempting young flesh. Inuyasha gasped to feel the violent hunger evident in those kisses, and threw his head back against Sesshomaru's right shoulder.

Sesshomaru immediately claimed his parted lips with an open-mouthed kiss and a deep thrust of his tongue. Inuyasha turned around in his arms without breaking the kiss, pushing Sesshomaru backwards away from the window and into the room until they fell together onto their father's bed.

The demon lord had never kissed Inuyasha like this. The boy had only ever touched his lips to his under duress, with a deep reluctance that had injured Sesshomaru even as it aroused the cruel side of his nature to force himself on someone he had thought of at the time as a sort of glorified slave of high rank.

These kisses were entirely different, coming from an eager, tender mouth that expressed the boy's willingness and pleasure with neither the least tinge of his former submissiveness nor Tsubasa's peculiar brand of dominance. Such a contradictory mouth – capable of uttering such coarse words in anger, yet so full of sweet puppy-breath; masculine in form, but so rosily flushed and tender now as it responded fearlessly to the demon lord.

Sesshomaru found himself unsettled by the unusual and unfamiliar feeling of knowing that he was now courting a partner of equal status whom he cared about, and furiously pleased down to the unexplored depths of his being to be grappling like this with the brother he had desired for so long.

"Inuyasha," he whispered fiercely as he dived in on the boy's throat again, provoking a guileless moan from him.

Sesshomaru's hands tore at the white garments covering Inuyasha's body, almost ripping off the sewn-on tie which fastened loosely on the left side of the boy's waist. But as the robe parted and he was aching to cover that beautiful torso with more kisses and draw invisible lines over it with his exploring fingers, he suddenly remembered himself and held back, hovering over Inuyasha, panting with an emotion that was very close to pain.

"Inuyasha, do you want this?" he asked, forcing the unwelcome question out of his mouth even though every cell of his body and every wisp of his soul longed to rush ahead without pause. He hated having to ask, particularly because it recalled his domineering question from the last time he had compelled his brother to submit to him in his bedroom.

Inuyasha's eyes flew open, and his hands stopped tugging at the sash of Sesshomaru's formal dinner robe. The echo of the previous occasion on which his brother had played his body like a game was not lost on him. "What the hell is this? Some new form of torture?" he snapped. "Of course I bloody want it!"

"I made you a promise that I would never again do to you in bed anything you did not want me to, and I keep my promises," Sesshomaru growled out through gritted teeth as his level of arousal reached a point where it was causing him actual physical agony.

"Oh for the love of all the gods!" the half-demon hissed. "What are you going to make me do next? _Beg_ you for it? Bloody hell, you can be such a bastard!"

Inuyasha tried to push Sesshomaru away and sit up, only to be slammed back down onto the mattress so swiftly that his head spun.

" _If_ you want this, then you are going nowhere tonight, my little brother," Sesshomaru informed him, managing to both growl and smile at the same time as he crouched on all fours over Inuyasha, pinning the half-demon down by his wrists. "I am trying to keep my promise to you. Now tell me: do you want _me_?"

It was a different question. Same, yet different. Staring up into the demon lord's beautiful face, Inuyasha swallowed hard, and answered: "I want you as much as I once detested you, and that's a lot. I wasn't sure of it before, but I am sure now."

"Truly?"

"Yes, in the name of all that is sacred and profane, I want you!" he hissed more loudly. "Do I really have to say it aga–"

Sesshomaru cut off Inuyasha's words with a deep kiss that left him reeling, feeling as if he was plunging backwards, deep, deep down into some lost dimension of their father's mattress. He was drifting blindly through an infinite, unknown world, anchored only by his brother's embrace, savouring the caresses of his lips and tongue, delighting in the taste of him whose mouth imparted to him its lingering hints of wine and anger.

But stronger than all the residual emotions within Sesshomaru from their earlier exchange, and their bitterness over Naraku, was a violent passion which left Inuyasha assailed by both desire and apprehension.

Sesshomaru felt a tremor shoot through the body beneath his. He released Inuyasha's wrists and found the boy's arms encircling his shoulders, something he had never done in bed with him before. Moved by the trust he was displaying, Sesshomaru softened his kiss, returning Inuyasha to the surface of the new universe they had plummeted into without a thought before beginning to explore the smooth, unmarked skin of the boy's face and neck.

"Sesshomaru…" Inuyasha moaned, shuddering and growing hard almost instantly as his brother's lips traced an exceptionally sensitive line running down the side of his neck.

The demon lord committed that spot to memory and discovered several others with his clever mouth as he made his way down the half-demon's body, tearing his sleeping garments easily off him as he went along. To Inuyasha's frustration, he bypassed his growing erection and moved on to his thighs, calves and feet instead.

In contrast to the ease with which Sesshomaru divested him of his soft, comfortable sleepwear, Inuyasha's hands fumbled with his brother's fussy, formal evening robe. He had only succeeded in removing the outermost layer and was about to growl in annoyance with himself and with his sibling's apparent obsession with sucking his toes when Sesshomaru slid up his body without warning and rendered him helpless by slipping his hardening member smoothly into his mouth.

Inuyasha inhaled sharply and fell back with a groan onto the mattress as Sesshomaru both pleasured and teased him with his lips and his tongue – now offering firm, hot strokes and now light, barely-there swirls of his tongue – while his left hand gently caressed his scrotum and his right slipped under him to stroke the small of his back. _That_ proved to be another highly sensitive spot, going by the way Inuyasha's spine arched when Sesshomaru's claws ran lightly over the skin there.

"Se – Sesshomaru…" Inuyasha stammered, nearly incoherent as the demon lord held his cock snugly between his tongue and the roof of his mouth and pushed down hard, then kept up the steady rhythm until the half-demon came with a wordless cry, shooting his cum into his throat and bucking against him wildly until he had to hold his hips down with his hands, controlling yet accepting his tiny thrusts until his seed was spent.

Sesshomaru let him slip slowly from his mouth, swallowed the seed, then kissed him lightly on his right hip and up his body to his face, giving him time to recover just enough to peek out through half-lidded eyes and reach for him.

He caressed Inuyasha's hair and ears, admiring the flushed colouring of his cheeks, and waited for him to half-consciously murmur his name before starting to torment and pleasure him all over again. He used only his hands this time, appreciatively taking in every muscular curve of his body with ravenous golden eyes, torturing himself by holding back instead of stripping off his own clothes and plunging the entire length of his shaft hard and fast into his tight little ass as he really wanted to do.

Inuyasha's over-sensitised body both fought and craved further stimulation, and he pleaded: "No… I can't do this a second time…" But his being in two minds made his plea unconvincing, so Sesshomaru forged ahead, drawing another soul-rattling climax from him, the ejaculate spilling out over his hands and the bedcover.

Only after that did Sesshomaru shed his own garments, part Inuyasha's thighs and lie atop him, positioning himself at the opening to his body. The boy scarcely seemed aware of where he was, but when he felt Sesshomaru between his legs, he tilted his hips slightly to say that he was ready. When the demon lord tried to press in, however, the prince's eyes widened and he winced, his body having nearly forgotten the preparation from days ago of the jade implements.

Sesshomaru pulled back instantly. "Oh gods, what am I doing?" he muttered. "You're only a child."

Those words brought Inuyasha round to full consciousness with impressive speed. He glared at Sesshomaru and growled: "A _child?_ You didn't think so when you stuck all that precious green stuff up my ass during my first days back here!"

"Which you hated," Sesshomaru reminded him.

"Which I am saying okay to now," Inuyasha countered.

"I am not fucking you tonight. You don't know what you're asking."

"I _do_."

"You do _not_ ," Sesshomaru declared.

"But I _want_ to… and _you_ want to…" with that, Inuyasha reached down and enclosed Sesshomaru's blood-engorged organ with one perfectly warm, sure hand and stroked it so firmly that the demon lord groaned in an uncharacteristically helpless way.

"Inuyasha… don't… you're not ready–" Sesshomaru hissed, panicking on his brother's behalf as he felt the boy directing the head of his cock between the tight curves of his buttocks.

Inuyasha's warm, snug hand suddenly released him, leaving him thrusting into thin air.

"Then _get me ready_ ," he said.

Sesshomaru almost did a double take. It was an order. The brat had given him an order!

When he did not budge, Inuyasha made as if to push him off and leave the bed. "Fine, if you won't move, then I'll go and get those jade… thingies."

Sesshomaru held him back. "You hated those objects."

"I did. But I don't now. I'll get them."

"I told you that you were going nowhere tonight, and I meant it," Sesshomaru growled, pinning him to the bed. "I'll bring them over from my room. You stay." He rose, pulled his outer robe back over his bare body, and cinched it tightly with its sash.

As he stepped away from the bed, Inuyasha propped himself up on his elbows to look at him and asked: "Why don't we both go back to your room?"

The movement and the question made Sesshomaru's possessive desires flare. How could he leave this delectable creature alone even for two minutes? But the boy was so deliciously naked now that Sesshomaru wanted nothing covering his flesh – not even for a short walk back to his bedroom. He made a quick decision which pleased him more and more as he acted on it, undoing his evening robe's sash again and returning to the bed, forcing Inuyasha down on his back as he straddled his body, kneeling over him.

"I gave you an order to stay, little brother, and stay you shall," Sesshomaru said with dangerous but playful seductiveness as he bound Inuyasha's left wrist to the carved wooden bars of the bed head with one end of the thickly embroidered sash, and his right wrist a few bars away from the left with the other end of the sash.

Inuyasha frowned at the feel of the fabric binding him, which, though stiff, was nothing that he couldn't easily slash through.

But Sesshomaru was speaking again: "I know you could easily rip the sash apart or break the wooden bars, but I _like_ that sash, and I am _very_ fond of Father's bed, and if you damage either of them, I shall spank you till your bottom is too sore to touch. And _then_ I will pinch it hard. Now behave yourself and do not move a muscle until I return. Consider that a small punishment for daring to give your elder brother and king an order. Which he is nonetheless obeying."

Sesshomaru even spread Inuyasha's legs slightly and deliberately left his body uncovered, saying to him: "That is how I want to find you when I step back into this room in one minute's time – ready and waiting for me. I expect nothing less, Inuyasha."

The half-demon's eyes widened and his cheeks reddened further as he realised that it would in fact be easier to obey Sesshomaru if his brother chained him by the wrists and ankles to the wall or floor with demon steel, than to hold this vulnerable position with nothing more than the obedience of his own muscles and a flimsy strip of embroidered silk.

Sesshomaru gave him one more searing glance before leaving the room, his evening robe loosely clasped at the front.

It took only a minute, but that minute seemed to drag on forever as Inuyasha lay there exposed and feeling embarrassed in the most inconveniently arousing way, wondering what he would do if Sesshomaru took longer than promised to return. What if this was a twisted joke on his part? What if he left him lying here for an hour? Or longer? Or brought someone back into the room with him…?

But Sesshomaru did return swiftly, and alone. Inuyasha's relief was tempered by his embarrassment growing even greater as Sesshomaru devoured his completely bare body again with his eyes, as if he were considering the option of taking him like this, tied up and spread out. He exhaled again only when Sesshomaru finally slipped off his evening robe and covered him with his own flesh by stretching out on top of him.

"One of these days I will take you when you are all properly trussed up," Sesshomaru murmured as he reached up and unknotted the sash to free Inuyasha's wrists. "But not tonight. Tonight I want you free to move with me as you wish."

He unwrapped the cloth package he had set down beside them, containing the jade finger gloves, the jar of oil and other items. Inuyasha cautiously touched one of the jade pieces with the tip of one claw. "Let me put that on for you," he said.

"Do you really wish to?" Sesshomaru asked.

Inuyasha nodded. He took the jade pieces from his brother, straightened the leather strips joining them, and examined them to see which piece was meant for which finger. He slipped them over Sesshomaru's long digits and secured the ties round his wrist as he had seen him do before. Then he unstopped the oil jar and poured out some oil, with which he coated the jade.

Having done that, he turned over onto his front without a word and crouched on the mattress with his knees under his chest.

"Are you comfortable like that?" Sesshomaru asked him.

He turned his head to his left to look at his brother, and nodded.

Sesshomaru kissed his back along the spine, knelt back on his own heels, and gently eased one jade-covered finger into the opening that he longed to plunge into. It went in quite easily, so he was quickly able to insert two fingers. Sesshomaru slowly progressed to the tips of three fingers before it became difficult, and Inuyasha seemed to feel some discomfort, although he did not complain.

"Are you all right?" he asked the boy.

"I can take it."

Sesshomaru held the three fingertips of jade in place for a few minutes, giving Inuyasha's flesh time to accommodate them. He tested it another centimetre or two before deciding that he was stretched enough. Then he withdrew his fingers, untied the finger gloves and put the jade aside before oiling his cock well with the liquid from the jar.

"Stretch out," he whispered to the half-demon.

Inuyasha uncurled from his crouching position, and Sesshomaru mounted him. Inuyasha's lungs snatched in a rush of air against his conscious will when he felt Sesshomaru's hardness between his legs, its head probing the rim of the orifice which he had never imagined before would welcome an entry of this nature.

But he was here, he was willing, and he was ready. Sesshomaru pushed in slowly, giving him enough time to adjust to him. The oil did its job well, making the penetration less uncomfortable for the boy than it might have been. Within seconds, he was inside him, thrilling to the heat of his snug, inviting body.

He wanted to talk to Inuyasha as he began to thrust slowly in and out. He wanted to ask how he was, if he ought to slow down or stop. But he was caught off-guard by how intimate this moment felt to him.

It was not a time for talking.

He twined his arms round Inuyasha's chest and shoulders and caressed his skin with his oil-warmed hands, communicating his affection through his palms and fingers.

Inuyasha found the back of his hand with his own oil-coated palm as Sesshomaru's thrusts grew deeper and more regular after the careful, stop-start beginning. He felt some discomfort, but there was no pain, and he liked it that Sesshomaru was holding him, skin to skin, pushing deep into him with nothing between them, no jade, no resentment, no hatred.

Sesshomaru was nibbling his right shoulder with his lips, testing his fangs lightly against the flesh, careful not to break the skin. Inuyasha turned his face to the right to nuzzle Sesshomaru's hair, prompting his demon brother to raise his head and nuzzle him back.

The tenderness of that exchange aroused Sesshomaru further, driving him to thrust more quickly and deeply into Inuyasha. Inuyasha cried out, and Sesshomaru slowed down.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, kissing the boy's neck. "Am I hurting you?" This was the point at which he usually ploughed on mechanically, using whoever was under him to satisfy himself, with little attention to how they were feeling unless it was part of his game to manipulate them emotionally as well. A tiny remnant of that self wished to smile coldly and push ahead, to enjoy the knowledge that he could inflict pain in so very many different ways.

But Inuyasha was Inuyasha. Whatever the reasons of his heart, mind and soul, Sesshomaru had made the decision that this boy was important to him, and with that decision had come one choice after another – some of them conscious, some instinctive – to be good to him. So he said: "If it hurts I'll stop."

But Inuyasha answered: "No, don't stop. I like having you inside me."

Sesshomaru paused, anyway, to drizzle more oil over the point of entry before continuing. It made Inuyasha much more comfortable, and he began to rock back to meet Sesshomaru's thrusts. It started to feel good to Inuyasha in a different sort of way from when he was the one pushing into Sesshomaru's mouth or hand, a more diffuse sensation that was harder to pin down to one spot or one move, but which left him straining for more.

"Do you like this?" Sesshomaru whispered.

"Yes," he whispered back, the end of that single word trailing into a moan as Sesshomaru increased the pace.

Inuyasha tightened the ring of muscle hard around Sesshomaru's shaft, making the demon lord gasp with pleasure and drive clean, firm strokes into the half-demon, now panting under him with pleasure and gripping the back of his hand, his palm slick with oil and sweat.

Sesshomaru felt the pressure that had built up from holding back for so long rise to another level – almost impossibly, for he had thought a moment ago that he was already tipping over the brink, but it scaled another notch, and he grunted with passion as he thrust hard into Inuyasha and felt him tighten around him again, making him bury his face in the half-demon's hair and neck and taste the throb of his racing pulse against his tongue.

"Inuyasha…" Sesshomaru breathed his name into the skin of his throat, exhaling it like a prayer which rose from his lips a second before he burst into a stunning climax that seemed to go on endlessly, his whole body and soul milking every last drop of desire from that perfect point of deep contact with the boy he had come to adore.

The pleasing sensations suffused Inuyasha as Sesshomaru raced towards his climax and fired his seed into his body. Though the younger of the two did not come for a third time that night, he felt his body peak and relax in a completely different, yet deeply satisfying way which reached its apex when Sesshomaru, who had been taking his weight on his elbows, slumped bonelessly over him at last, his head coming to rest on the back of his right shoulder, his heated breath warming Inuyasha's already hot skin, leaving them both deliciously drained and on the cusp of dreams.

"Inuyasha… my own…" the demon lord murmured half-consciously, lips seeking the curve of the boy's neck.

"Yours," Inuyasha whispered back, himself emotionally spent, as they slipped into sleep together.


	30. What Price?

Hours before dawn, he awoke in his father's bedroom, held in his brother's arms. At once, a sinking feeling rocked his heart when he remembered that Sesshomaru had not wanted to go all the way with him until he had insisted. Maybe it was too much, too soon? Would Sesshomaru regret this development? Would he himself regret it? He had been too hasty, too anxious to act on the feelings which he had only just come to recognise as attraction, and had been driven closer to Sesshomaru by his jealousy of Naraku instead of waiting for the time to be right.

He should have waited for a better time…

But the sleeping demon lord stirred in response to the unsettled feeling in Inuyasha's half-demon aura, and pulled him closer. "You're not thinking of running away from me, are you?" Sesshomaru growled seductively into his ear.

He proceeded to make love to him all over again, giving him so much of his attention and affection that Inuyasha forgot his doubts for a while.

Afterwards, they curled up together in a silence which felt comfortable to Sesshomaru but heavy to his brother. The prince did not know how to articulate his unease, so the verbal plea he made to the demon lord was one that had nothing to do with how he truly felt: "I don't want to see Naraku's face at breakfast."

His eyes looked upon the dark-purple sky and watched it lighten by the merest shade of blue, a warning that the sun was speeding upwards to the horizon.

"I never have breakfast with unwelcome visitors from other lands," Sesshomaru assured him, giving him another kiss. "When they stay at the castle, they are served their morning meals in their own rooms, and I eat in mine. So you and I shall eat together in my room."

"After a bath, okay? We can't eat breakfast or go downstairs smelling like this."

"Smelling like what?" Sesshomaru teased, snuffling around Inuyasha's hair and neck and chest, making him chuckle. "You mean of this most delicious scent of sex and half-demon naughtiness and dog demon lust?"

Inuyasha laughed, quelling his worries again as Sesshomaru's snuffling tickled him, and he squirmed and held him off the best he could, finally saving himself from further tickling – and possibly more sex – by pointing out that the sky was getting brighter, and they should return to their rooms.

"To _my_ room," Sesshomaru asserted as he pulled on his outer robe and picked up the jade pieces he had dropped to the carpet the night before and folded them up along with the oil in the wrapping cloth. "Your attendant can come over to see to your dressing and bath needs."

"Father's bed is so comfortable, though, and I'm so short of sleep, no thanks to you… I don't think I feel like walking down the corridor to your room," Inuyasha murmured. He had slipped on his brother's dressing gown, but now he fell back against the pillows.

"Up," Sesshomaru ordered, taking him by the hand and pulling him into a sitting position. "On my back. Now."

"On your _back_?" Inuyasha echoed incredulously. "Like just before you squashed me out in the field?"

"Come on."

The playfulness of it all made him feel lighter of heart, and he went along with it.

So the guards along the corridor found it impossible not to stare in amazement as their king strode out of his father's old room and into his own bedroom just before dawn, with the prince riding piggy-back on him all the way as if they were children, the younger one chuckling and resting his chin affectionately on his brother's left shoulder.

They gave instructions to the servant on duty at the end of the corridor to tell the bath-furnace operators to heat the demon lord's bath, then soaked in the hot water together as the sun slowly came up over the horizon.

Inuyasha had a feeling that if Natsumi, Isshin and Sesshomaru's two other wardrobe servants had not hurried upstairs to attend to them upon being informed that they had woken up earlier than usual, Sesshomaru would have taken him again, right there and then in the bath.

As it was, the demon lord had to content himself with running his claws through his brother's hair and washing him with his own hands, deep under the water so as not to embarrass him too much in front of the servants.

Inuyasha would not get out of the water in front of the others, so Sesshomaru had them wait outside the bathroom while he wrapped Inuyasha and himself in their bathrobes.

"What are you still so pensive about?" Sesshomaru whispered when they were alone. "Have I made you unhappy in some way?"

"No. It's just that… it all happened so fast last night…"

"Is that what's bothering you?" Sesshomaru asked. "And here I was thinking that we had taken ever so long to get there."

"Really?"

"Really," Sesshomaru replied, kissing him and taking a weight off him.

Inuyasha smiled and kissed him back, feeling much happier. "I'll go back to my room to get dressed," he said. "It's a lot easier that way, instead of hauling those fussy formal robes back and forth."

"If you wish – but leave your room door open," Sesshomaru said. "You can dress behind your screens. I want to know that there are no closed doors between us this morning, even if you are in another room."

"You really _are_ strange," Inuyasha remarked with a grin, kissing him on the mouth again. "But okay, I'll leave my door open."

"Come back quickly for breakfast."

With that, they parted for the next half-hour to let Sesshomaru's three attendants assemble his elaborate formal wardrobe and groom his long hair, and for Natsumi to get Inuyasha properly attired in clothing that was not nearly as fussy as his brother's, but which was nonetheless fancier than his everyday wear.

Natsumi turned away as usual to let Inuyasha put on the first inner layer of clothing by himself, but that white layer was thin and light apart from its stiffer collar. So when the racoon demon turned back, she could easily see the marks Sesshomaru's kisses and love bites had left on the prince's skin.

"Well? Is Lord Sesshomaru a good lover?" she asked softly and playfully, having picked up the vibes between the royal brothers this morning – a strong undertow of affection that had not been there on all those earlier occasions when Sesshomaru had ordered Inuyasha into his bed.

"You should know," Inuyasha mumbled, reddening.

"Oh dear no, serving the king at his baths is quite different from spending _all night_ with him," she replied.

"I'm _not_ talking about this."

"Yes, Your Highness," she answered demurely, but in the mirror, Inuyasha could see her smile, and he reddened further.

"I can see your face, you know," he grumbled, as she fastened the second layer of his clothing, a light silk robe in a lavender shade.

"I know," she replied, her smile growing wider.

"Oh, stop it!" he growled.

By this time, Natsumi had drawn her lower lip between her teeth and was biting it to stop herself from laughing.

"What?" Inuyasha hissed, careful to keep his voice down as his door was open.

"Nothing," his attendant answered. "Except that I remember someone sitting here only a few days ago and grumbling about how 'pathetic' it was to have his elder brother as a lover."

"Well, maybe it still _will_ be!" Inuyasha snapped in embarrassment, and with a frisson of insecurity. "Maybe every other night after this won't be good, or he'll get bored with me, or I'll get mad with him and go back to the village…"

"Or maybe," Natsumi interjected. "It will all turn out _fine_."

"Hmm."

By the time she had wrapped the third robe layer in a deep, iridescent blue round his trim frame and tied the sash, Inuyasha was thinking to himself that perhaps all would be well.

But while she was brushing his hair, he thought that maybe everything would go wrong.

When she moved on to conditioning it with a bit of oil, he had swung back to thinking that it might work after all.

And when she finished by carefully smoothing the inside and outside of his furry ears with a piece of soft cloth that had a dab of oil on it, he was absolutely certain that everything would end horribly.

So he grabbed his Tetsusaiga once Natsumi was done with his grooming, pushed it through his sash, and prepared to hurry back to Sesshomaru's room picturing all the ways in which this new dimension of their relationship wouldn't work. But as he rose to his feet and went around the screen towards the open doorway, he found Sesshomaru already standing there, looking into the bedroom.

Natsumi bowed and escaped to the other end of the room where she busied herself with wardrobe matters that were hardly urgent.

"How is it that my robes are more elaborate than yours, but you have taken longer to get dressed and groomed?" Sesshomaru asked in low, deep tones with a touch of playfulness, which sent shivers right down to Inuyasha's toes.

"Maybe it's because you have three attendants and I have one?" Inuyasha returned, feeling suddenly self-conscious about how he looked as he walked towards his brother, who was resplendent in white and ice-blue garments held in place by a dazzlingly knotted sash of green and dark blue.

"Maybe it is because I do not hold whispered, chatty conversations with my attendants, nor do I allow them to tease me," Sesshomaru said, throwing his voice towards the other end of the room, in response to which Natsumi turned around in alarm, dropped to her knees and bowed her head to the ground in apology while blushing furiously.

"Natsumi was only reminding me of something I said days ago," Inuyasha said, taking Sesshomaru by the hand and leading him back to his bedroom before the poor girl sank like jelly through the floorboards.

"That it would be pathetic to be my lover?" Sesshomaru said, as they closed his room door behind them and were alone once more.

"That was before I liked you," Inuyasha replied, embarrassed, but not too worried because he could see the lively spark in Sesshomaru's golden eyes, and scent his pleasure. Carefully, so as not to disarrange his beautifully groomed hair and perfectly draped robes, he pressed his body against Sesshomaru's, and kissed him deeply on the mouth.

"Mmm… I forgive you for that statement you made in your ignorance," Sesshomaru murmured between this kiss and the next they moved smoothly into.

The demon lord tasted now of clean breath and gentle desire, so much the same and yet so interestingly different from last night's passionate, almost angry lust, that the prince was tempted to explore further. But breakfast was on the marble-topped table by the window, and if he messed up his brother's robes now, Isshin would have to be called back – and the chief attendant would probably fire him looks sharp enough to kill after seeing all his hard work undone.

So Inuyasha desisted and drew Sesshomaru over to the table instead, declaring: "I'm really, really hungry after last night. Think we can get some _real_ food down before we devour each other's tongues?"

"Your tongue will be on my menu for tonight, along with several other parts of your body," Sesshomaru promised as they took adjacent stools at the round table. These were the chairs, and this the table, at which Sesshomaru had once held him on his lap while saying things to him that had made him blush with shame and anger.

Everything had changed.

And breakfast had never tasted so good.

…

"Are you listening to me, Your Highness?" Jaken asked, raising his voice by half an octave.

"Huh?" Inuyasha asked, coming out of what was probably the thirtieth Sesshomaru-themed daydream of the morning, since breakfast.

Jaken sighed and repeated his earlier question, which the prince had not heard at all: "I asked you if you could see anything amiss in the accounts before you."

"Eh? Oh, these figures and stuff?"

Jaken groaned, but patiently replied: "Yes, those figures and _stuff_. Your Highness should learn to pick out inconsistencies and inaccuracies in accounts, so that others will not be able to pull the wool over your eyes by simply waving sheets of numbers in front of you, knowing that you will make nothing of them."

"Erm… the handwriting is a crime in itself?" Inuyasha ventured hopefully, squinting at the scrawled entries.

"Try again. If this were presented to you for your clearance and approval, would you see anything in it that you would want to ask questions about?"

"Er…" Inuyasha dragged out that noncommittal vocalisation for a long time before speaking his next words. "I would want to know… why we paid seventy gold pieces for the creation and delivery of a… sculpture for the art gallery in the east wing when the art gallery in that wing only has paintings…?"

"Well done," Jaken said, giving the prince a smile. "What about the figures themselves?"

Inuyasha had no fondness for numbers and sums, but he was not incompetent with them. Sticking his tongue out to concentrate harder, he ran through the figures twice, and found that they did not add up. "The total is wrong – it's a larger figure than the actual sum should be."

"Good," the kappa demon said with satisfaction. "That was the easy one."

"The 'easy one'? You mean there's _more_?" Inuyasha yelped.

Before he could raise any further complaint, and before Jaken could push the next sheet of paper across the desk to him, the prince's sharp nose caught the scent of someone approaching the library – someone who did not belong to the castle.

"So figures are not your strong suit," said a strange voice, even before the person in question appeared in the doorway.

When he did show his face, it turned out to be Hakudoshi, Naraku's middle child. It occurred to Inuyasha then that all the spider demon's children smelt almost exactly like him, and like one another. It wasn't surprising, he supposed, since Naraku had grown them from bits of his own patched-together body.

"I like numbers," the visitor declared starkly, entering the library without waiting for an invitation, and looking around with interest. "What a lot of books you have here – we have none in our home."

"I don't suppose you'd like to read any," Inuyasha mused. He stood up out of politeness, a few moments after Jaken had got to his little green feet and bowed cautiously to the young lord.

"Not at all. Books never interest me," replied the demon of boyish appearance, who seemed to wear a permanent expression of half-scorn and half-amusement on his face.

"Have you lost your family?" Inuyasha asked, craning his neck in exaggerated fashion and purposely casting wide glances around and behind Hakudoshi, as if expecting to see his father and siblings at any moment.

No one was there, of course, except for two of the castle's guards watching carefully from the doorway of the library, undoubtedly having been told that on no account was the prince to be left unguarded in the company of any of the visitors.

"Is this how you spend all your mornings?" Hakudoshi questioned, his voice suggesting a range of emotions from pity to curiosity to envy.

"Yes, most of my mornings are spent having lessons with Jaken-sensei," Inuyasha said in a neutral tone of voice, still wondering what the demon-boy wanted.

"If you became Father Naraku's consort, you wouldn't need to attend morning lessons, or any lessons – at least not of this sort."

Inuyasha raised his eyebrows and glared at Hakudoshi. "Well, lucky for me then that I have no intention of becoming your father's consort, because I kinda _like_ being properly educated, even if it's sometimes a pain."

The visitor trailed his hand along the spines of a row of books as he strolled past a shelf, then he walked right up to Inuyasha and touched his hair without permission. He was several inches shorter than the prince, so it was the tips of that long silver mane that he stroked. "How long your hair is!" he exclaimed with interest. "And it's shinier and much more silvery than mine – how I envy you."

Jaken and the guards tensed, but Inuyasha reacted calmly, saying: "Greater length comes with age. You must be terribly young."

"I was made not that long ago, it's true. But it isn't fair. Byakuya is younger than me, but he is taller and has longer hair than I do, and it's the same colour as Father Naraku's."

"Perhaps if you didn't keep tearing at your hair every time you threw a tantrum – which is more often than you should – it would grow longer," said another strange voice from the library doorway.

Byakuya, the youngest of the three spider children, stood there now, pointing a look of interested amusement at his sibling, the prince and the tutor.

"What are you doing here?" Hakudoshi snapped at his brother.

"I might ask the same of you. Father Naraku did not give you permission to leave his side. I'm here to retrieve you." Byakuya entered the library, faced Inuyasha and Jaken, and bowed in apology. "Do forgive my _elder_ brother for interrupting your lesson. I'll get him out of your way now."

With that, he put a firm hand on the back of the demon-boy's neck and steered him out of the library, but not before glancing at Inuyasha and winking at him, flashing a right eye that seemed to move and bulge of its own accord, independently of the left.

The wink and the sight of the eye with a life of its own gave Inuyasha a distinctly creepy feeling, but Byakuya was otherwise friendly and appeared to be of a far less desultory and childish turn of mind than Hakudoshi, so the prince calmly and politely bowed back as they left the library.

"That was strange," Inuyasha murmured to Jaken when they were alone.

"We must tell Lord Sesshomaru about this later, before you join them for lunch," Jaken advised him anxiously. "Lord Sesshomaru will not like it at all that the lordling touched your hair without asking permission."

"Creepy things," Inuyasha muttered, before taking his seat at the desk again and ploughing on with his lesson, interspersing the learning points with more daydreaming.

Sesshomaru had excused him from the morning's activities with the visitors, who were to first view the art galleries, then watch the guards perform a display drill in the training hall on the other side of the castle grounds. Evidently, they had been on their way to the training hall when Hakudoshi chose to slip away from the party.

It was the two ministers who were playing host to the visitors for the morning itinerary, as Sesshomaru had decided that he would resume his discussions and exchanges with Naraku only from lunch onwards.

The demon lord had asked his brother early in the morning if he would like to visit the galleries and watch the drill – if he did, then Sesshomaru would go along too, as he had no intention of allowing Inuyasha anywhere near Naraku without being there himself. But Inuyasha said he would be bored by the endless works of art and the drill, which would not interest him as it did not involve real battle or proper sparring.

It was good after all to skip the morning itinerary and instead annoy Jaken by not concentrating on these dull rows and columns of orders and purchases and numbers – and of course to daydream some more.

…

When his lesson ended, Inuyasha was free to race back towards the royal wing. He thought back again over what had happened last night and all that had followed in the morning, and found himself half-fearing as he ran along the corridor of the royal wing that Sesshomaru had somehow changed his mind about the whole matter and decided to mate him to Naraku instead.

But when he knocked at Sesshomaru's door, let himself in and took in the splendid form of his elder brother rising from the desk to receive him, he saw only that Sesshomaru's eyes were lighting up at sight of him.

Immediately, he threw his fears aside once more and jumped eagerly into the demon lord's arms, wrapping his own arms around his neck and his legs around his waist, then diving deep into another searing kiss.

When he felt Sesshomaru's sash shift under his thighs, however, he quickly put his feet back on the floor and gasped: "Oh no, no, no – if I've messed up your robes your attendants will boil me alive!"

Sesshomaru growled as the prince bent to the task of straightening the lapels and neatening the knots he had disturbed, for he cared nothing for his robes or his attendants at this moment and only wanted Inuyasha writhing between his body and the mattress.

But Inuyasha's next words took his mind off the idea of tossing his little brother into bed and jumping in after him: "Hakudoshi came to the library alone while I was having my lessons. Nothing happened, but he did reach out and touch my hair without permission. Byakuya appeared after that and took him away."

"At what point did this happen?" Sesshomaru asked, alert at once.

"About an hour into my lessons."

"That was about the same time the guards reported to me that Kanna dropped her mirror in the art gallery and shattered it," Sesshomaru informed him. "It must have been a distraction to allow the middle child to get away. I do not like it that he touched you. Were you alone with him at any time?"

"No. Jaken-sensei was there throughout, and two guards stood in the doorway watching everything. We were all very careful. Nothing happened."

"If he used any kind of magic on you, you might not know it," Sesshomaru said, striding to the door at once and ordering the servant on duty to summon the healer Satoshi.

"What would Satoshi know?" Inuyasha asked, puzzled, as Sesshomaru returned to his side and examined his hair carefully.

"The wolf demon is not unskilled in magic for healing purposes. He will know a thing or two about its use – and more importantly, how to counter it. I shouldn't have worn you out the way I did last night – fatigue may have lowered your magical defences. Perhaps we should have waited till Naraku was gone."

"So you wish we hadn't done what we did last night?" Inuyasha asked, his concerns rushing back to the foreground.

"I'm not saying that, Inuyasha," Sesshomaru replied, looking into his eyes. "I do admit that I have doubts about whether I erred in going so far with you. After I sensed your worries this morning, I feared that I might have taken advantage of you at a time when you were upset over Naraku. Besides, you are still such a child. But I do _not_ regret what happened between us."

"I'm not that much of a child," Inuyasha protested unhappily. "I sometimes think I should be more of one, and sometimes less of one, but I'm really not such a baby. I'm grown-up enough to be your partner…"

Satoshi arrived just then, putting an end to their exchange. The wolf-demon entered with a look of concern in his eyes which lifted when he saw that the prince looked well.

"My lord, Your Highness," he said. "I heard from the other staff about the breaking of the magic mirror in one of the galleries. Has it affected Your Highness in any negative way?"

"No," Inuyasha said, even more puzzled now. "I didn't even know that Kanna had dropped her mirror until a few minutes ago."

"So Your Highness was not at the scene?" Satoshi asked.

"No. Why are you worried about the mirror?"

"Your Highness, the objects carried by the spider lord's children and entourage are strongly magical in nature, from what I understand, and from what I have sensed since their arrival. The Lady Kanna's mirror is her weapon, so it is unlikely that she would carelessly let it slip and break just like that. I feared that its shattering might have some significance and effect on the individuals present. I took it upon myself to observe the group leaving the gallery from as close by as I could, after learning of the incident. I did not see Your Highness, which worried me at first as I thought you had been among the party. I observed the rest of the group, however, and neither of our two ministers, nor any of their aides, appeared to have been affected in any way. Then when I received your summons to the royal wing, my lord, I immediately feared that the breaking of the mirror had after all harmed His Highness."

"No, like I said, I wasn't there," Inuyasha told him. "But at the time the mirror broke, first Naraku's middle child, then his youngest, apparently stole away from the group and came looking for me."

"The second lordling, Hakudoshi, touched the prince's hair," Sesshomaru told Satoshi. "That is why we sent for you."

The healer approached Inuyasha at once and requested permission to examine his hair. Having obtained it, he lifted the tresses in both his hands and took a deep sniff at them, watched very closely and with not a little jealousy by Sesshomaru.

"I can smell very faint traces of the lordling's touch at the very ends of your hair, Your Highness," Satoshi said.

"Yes, that is where he touched it."

The wolf demon put his hands over the spot where the remnants of Hakudoshi's scent lingered, and seemed to be trying to read with his fingers what had been done to the hair. Then he scrutinised Inuyasha's face and examined his half-demon aura carefully.

"Nothing of a magical nature appears to have been done to Your Highness," Satoshi said, after stepping back. "The lordling certainly touched your hair, but he did not seem to have attempted to place any spells or leave traces of magic on it, or on any other part of you. I am very sure of that."

"Then perhaps something else was done, and we are looking in the wrong place," Sesshomaru said thoughtfully.

But the moment had come for them to meet Naraku and his entourage for lunch, so no more could be discussed about the matter for this time. Nor was there privacy or time for finishing the conversation they had been engaged in before Satoshi's arrival.

…

"I heard that your mirror broke in the art gallery," Inuyasha said politely to Kanna when he and Sesshomaru joined the rest of the party for lunch. "I hope you were not hurt in the accident."

"I was not. Thank you for your concern," Kanna replied in a voice so thin and insubstantial that her words were nearly inaudible.

"The mirror looks fine, though," he remarked, glancing at the circle of reflective glass.

"It repairs itself," said Kanna even more softly than before.

"There's still a small notch at the edge," Inuyasha commented, his sharp eyes spotting a rough-edged depression near the mirror's frame. "I suppose it doesn't repair itself completely all at once?"

"Some things take more time," answered Kanna.

"Yeah, I guess."

"It's not the first time this silly child of mine has shattered her mirror – Kagura was never half as awkward," Naraku threw in his contribution from across the table. "Some kinds of damage, when inflicted repeatedly, can't be easily repaired."

Inuyasha glared at him, for his words were a reminder of how Natsumi's injuries had been inflicted on her over and over again, to the point where she had almost been unable to heal. It was on the tip of his tongue to snap out something harsh and rude at the spider demon.

But out of the corner of his eye he could see Minister Atsushi, diagonally across from him, shaking his head in a near-imperceptible warning not to flare up. Inuyasha also remembered in time his attendant's advice to remain calm in the presence of this being who took joy in the distress of others.

"We would _all_ do well to heed such wise words," the prince said at last, evenly. His cold eyeing of the spider lord made it clear that he was specifically including Naraku in his statement.

"What a precious creature His Highness is," Naraku laughed, practically devouring Inuyasha with his eyes. "Glaring at me like a pup over this fine spread of food. If it were not the case that Lord Sesshomaru has forbidden anyone else to touch this puppy without his permission, I would reach over the table to pinch those fresh young cheeks!"

"Naraku," said Sesshomaru in a dangerously pleasant fashion. "If you do _any such thing_ I shall be obliged to declare war on your territory."

Hakudoshi frowned and Byakuya raised his eyebrows, while some of the spider lord's aides and staff tittered nervously. Sesshomaru's tone of voice might have made the statement seem a joke, but no one could mistake the ferocious threat blazing in the demon king's golden eyes.

"Well, Your Majesty, we would not want that, would we?" Naraku asked with a twinkle that made his garnet eyes glitter unattractively. "Although I could dream of winning such a conflict, and picture what a charming prisoner of war your brother would make, I am realistic enough to know that I would have no chance of emerging the victor in a campaign such as one you could wage on me. And a king of your rank would be well within your rights to attack me for making further advances to a prince you may well prefer to promise to another, or perhaps… to keep to yourself."

It had not escaped Naraku's sharp eyes that something had shifted in the relationship between the brothers, making the air between them distinctly more intimate. While it angered him to think that his own machinations might have brought about a development he would have preferred not to see, he was also quick to begin calculating new possibilities that might work to his advantage in this changing scenario.

"As I said yesterday, Inuyasha will choose his own mate," Sesshomaru stated, looking at his brother.

"Your care of and affection for your brother is admirable, Lord Sesshomaru, considering it was not so very long ago that you would describe anyone with mixed origins as a 'filthy half-breed'," Naraku smiled, turning to glance from Sesshomaru to Inuyasha. "Did you know that, Your Highness?"

Inuyasha, hurt by the ugly words, flashed a look at Sesshomaru. But the demon lord looked back at him with eyes that burned fiercely enough to melt his injured feelings, and said: "I have uttered many things that in their own time have signified the foolishness of my youth. But I am not that child now, and my brother knows it well. And he will choose his own mate."

"Interesting. Whomever he chooses had better keep him as carefully as he would guard a king's ransom," Naraku remarked significantly, an edge to his voice revealing his disappointment at not having been able to cause trouble between the siblings.

"Perhaps some tribes like to define everything in monetary terms, but in my tribe we do not like to put a price on our family members, for it might suggest that they can be bought," Sesshomaru stated.

"It seems there is no price I can offer that would buy me the prince," Naraku said, his comments verging on the offensive, considering that Inuyasha was sitting right there listening to everything, and they were in the presence of dining hall servants and attendants.

"It seems not," Sesshomaru replied coldly.

"Well, then, it will be a lucky individual who is chosen by His Highness," Naraku sighed dramatically.

"Indeed the person will be most fortunate," said Sesshomaru, looking at Inuyasha, his intense eyes and words imparting to the prince a meaningful and satisfying conclusion to their unfinished conversation from before.

"More fortunate for me if the one I choose also chooses me," Inuyasha said steadily, looking back at his brother.

Naraku, who did not miss the exchange of deep looks, could only smile and seethe.


	31. Mirror, Mirror

While Sesshomaru had a post-lunch drink with Naraku and the ministers before they were all to tour the gardens on the grounds, the younger members of the party were advised to return to their rooms to change their footwear if necessary. The ground would be wet after the shower that had fallen during their lunch, and Kanna's and Hakudoshi's sandals were too flimsy not to be muddied and soaked through by the excursion.

Inuyasha took the chance to flee upstairs to his bedroom, to calm his unsettled emotions. He was still a little injured by Naraku's pointed revelation of Sesshomaru's past prejudice against half-demons. On the other hand, his heart had felt light enough to take flight when he heard Sesshomaru's honest response to the spider lord's verbal stab.

He had to find his balance now, between the injury and the delight, and to process what his exchange with Sesshomaru at the dining table had meant, with all its undercurrents governing words so openly spoken, but holding so much more than their plain meaning.

It was also a good opportunity to escape for a while from the stifling social etiquette required when guests were present. Proper court behaviour was not new to him – his mother had taught him well both at the castle and at the home of her relatives. Her family, although they had fallen far from the days when they had ruled small human territories of their own, had retained some measure of social status among other mortals. That had meant regular visits from other important members of the extended clan, so she had made certain he knew what to do and carried himself well. But as a half-demon shunned by his human relations, he had never been expected to stay long at any gathering, nor would he have been welcome if he had tried to take a greater part in social events.

He hated being stiff and proper, anyway. It was so suffocating. Within Sesshomaru's castle, the seat of power of a demon lord who far outranked what Inuyasha's human family would have been even at the peak of its glory, the demands of etiquette were vastly more onerous than when he was growing up under his mother's care.

He exhaled a great, held-in breath when he entered the royal wing, where Kazuki was just bringing Natsumi's lunch in to her. Although the presence of the two servants meant that he wouldn't have the space or privacy to think about what he and his brother had said to each other earlier, he was pleased to see the friendly racoon demon from the kitchen.

Kazuki bowed to him and was hastening to set out the plates and excuse himself when Inuyasha told him: "Why don't you sit here and eat with Natsumi before you have to get back to your work? I'll only be in for a few minutes, and Natsumi must be bored out of her skull by not being able to move freely about as she usually does!"

Inuyasha quickly told the guards at the door that he was permitting Kazuki to eat with Natsumi today.

"You are very generous and kind, Your Highness," Kazuki said, delighted by his suggestion, for he had missed meeting his intended mate last night, as he always did after both of them had completed their work for the day. "I would be very happy to spend some time with Natsumi."

"I just need to put my writing paper out here on the desk, so that I'll remember to write to Kikyo and Kaede about what I've been up to these few days," the prince said, rifling around in his desk drawers.

"Your Highness, the letter you began writing to your friends in the village just before you learnt that you would be visiting them is still in the top drawer. You may wish to continue on the same sheet unless you have decided on a very different start to the letter," Natsumi reminded him.

"Hmm…" Inuyasha murmured, staring at the sheet addressed to Kikyo and Kaede, with the few lines he had written on the night Sesshomaru had told him about the secret passage and given him leave to visit his friends. "I suppose it's safe enough – I can always move on to newer news after a neutral opening like that, right?"

He put the sheet down on top of a small stack of writing paper on his desk, then shooed Kazuki and Natsumi over to their seats at the small table on which the dishes were set, telling them to ignore him and just enjoy the food.

He spent a bit of time trying to decide whether to wear the suede-textured blue boots he already had on out to the wet gardens. Finally, he made up his mind to change to a more moisture-resistant black pair, so that Natsumi wouldn't have to spend hours sponging grass stains out of the suede. Then he was off, walking briskly out through a side door into the castle grounds, where he was supposed to join the others for the start of the garden tour. The moment he stepped outdoors, however, the rising wind carried to him a distracting scent of either Naraku or his children, coming from the direction of Bokusen'o's forest patch.

Inuyasha immediately headed that way to find out who was there. He and his brother had agreed with Bokusen'o before the spider demons' arrival that the tree demon should remain undisturbed by the visitors. They decided that it would be best if the visitors had no knowledge of his existence, for Naraku was not known to be a friend of trees or tree demons. Sesshomaru wanted no trouble for their godfather while the spiders remained.

Fearing that the guests might have sniffed out his godfather, Inuyasha sprang into the trees, trying not to snag his formal robes on the twigs and branches. He moved in complete silence, his hair streaming back in the downwind like a thick white sash.

He did his best to conceal his presence in the forest patch. During his training sessions with Totosai, when he had learnt to sense his Tetsusaiga's spirit and demon-fang energy, he had also grown more aware of how his own half-demon aura was projected. Now, he experimented with pulling his aura into itself, so that it would not broadcast his arrival to those who were sensitive to the spiritual energies of others. He was pleased to find that he could do it. He had not yet learnt the trick of hiding his scent through magical spells, but this forested area was full of his scent, as he regularly spent so much time here. He thus hoped that he would not be noticed by those he had come to observe.

True to what his nose had alerted him to, Kanna and Hakudoshi were in these woods. Bokusen'o was in no immediate danger, for the spider children had not succeeded in sniffing him out. Besides, two castle guards on patrol at the wall were watching the visitors from a distance, ready to raise the alarm if they noticed anything wrong.

The young pair had only been following what little they had detected of a peculiar demon presence in the woods, going by what Inuyasha heard Hakudoshi say: "How odd – I'm sure I caught a hint of an extremely powerful presence all the way over here from where we were in that garden – but there's nothing now."

Kanna was ignoring her brother, looking as completely withdrawn as she had from the moment Inuyasha had seen her. It did not seem to bother her that the wind whistling through the forest was blowing her hair all across her face. She simply gazed blankly into her mirror through the colourless, flying strands whipping across her eyes, and did not respond to her sibling in any way. Inuyasha thought she was looking at her reflection, but his sharp ears soon caught the tiniest whispers moving past her pallid lips.

She was saying:

 _Mirror, mirror in my hands,  
_   
_Who is the fairest in these lands?_

He thought he heard the mirror whisper back:

 _Sesshomaru is the fairest in these lands._

Then Kanna said:

 _Mirror, mirror in my hand,  
_   
_Who is the fairest of our clan?_

And Inuyasha heard the mirror whisper back:

 _Kagura is the fairest of your clan._

"So she's not dead," Hakudoshi snapped, having heard the mirror's reply. "If she were dead, your mirror wouldn't keep naming _her_ every single time you ask that question."

He began to stomp his way out of the forest patch, possibly with the intention of finding Naraku at once and telling him what the mirror had confirmed.

Kanna said nothing, but lowered the mirror again and held it before her like a child clutching a pillow or toy, before following her younger brother out of the woods. Inuyasha noticed that the mirror was still chipped where he had observed it to be damaged earlier. That thing was certainly taking a long time to repair itself from being dropped… or could it be the case that one shard had not returned to the main body of the mirror…?

He dropped softly to the ground once they had left. Hurrying over to Bokusen'o, he quickly said: "Don't show your face, in case any of them are spying on us. I just want to make sure you're all right."

He heard Bokusen'o's voice in his head returning the answer: _Young prince, I am well. You should not be worrying about one as old and experienced in self-defence as I am – worry about yourself first._

"I'm fine," Inuyasha told him. "I'll be off now. Talk to you more when these nuisances are gone, okay?"

 _Yes, when they are gone._

So Inuyasha made his way back through the forest patch the way he had come, and hurried back to the meeting point in the autumn garden, where the tour was to start. He was among the last of the party to arrive.

His appearance provoked a skin-crawling smile from Naraku, and a look of quiet relief from Sesshomaru, who had wondered why he was taking so long. He bowed to them, and they soon began their walk.

The head gardener and two of his assistants were in attendance to introduce the visitors to some of the more interesting features in each landscaped space, and to tell them the names and histories of plants that aroused their curiosity.

"Where have you been?" Sesshomaru asked Inuyasha under his breath when Naraku and his children were asking the gardener about a particular species of tree that intrigued them because it was new to them, and because the garden staff had mentioned the healing properties of its roots when cut, pared and boiled into an essence.

"The two eldest spider sprogs were hanging around near Bokusen'o. I was worried about him; I spied on them to make sure they weren't up to mischief," he whispered.

"You should have taken a guard with you – I told you I didn't want you alone near them."

"A guard would only have announced my presence!" Inuyasha hissed back.

"Even so."

"Bokusen'o was there, and two guards were at the wall."

They had to break off their exchange there, for the group was moving on, and Naraku was returning to their side.

They toured three gardens before proceeding to cross the open field in front of the royal wing to reach another garden on the other side of the grounds. On the way, they passed Satoshi shepherding his child-demon followers into one of the gardens. The children all bowed to their king, prince, ministers and guests – the smaller ones needed prompting from their teacher not to shrink away from the intimidating spider visitors, but when they did bow, they looked adorable.

The gathering wind, which had not died down since the noontime shower, rose again and whipped every blade of grass around them into movement. Robes and hair flapped wildly as the royal party and the guests passed the children and Satoshi.

Alas, the wind was also disturbing things within the castle, as Inuyasha quickly found out when they were directly in front of the royal wing and he spotted movement inside his own bedroom window. The letter he had begun to Kikyo and Kaede, and some of the sheets of writing paper on his desk next to the open shutters, had been caught up by the sharp wind and were turning mad circles in the air between his room and the outside of the castle.

He heard Natsumi's soft exclamation and saw her attempting to catch the sheets.

He could now see her perfectly from where he was out in the field. Unfortunately, it meant that Naraku too could see her clearly, framed as she was by the open window.

The spider lord, still seething from the lunchtime discussion and the emotions between the two brothers he had witnessed, lost all sense of self-control at the sight of the racoon demon who had once been his slave, but who had been smuggled out of his clutches by a rebellious daughter he had tried to murder.

He recognised her immediately.

A growl that blended fury and excitement in equal portions was the only warning anyone had before a startlingly long tentacle shot out of Naraku's body towards the royal wing, where its muscular, curling tip lashed through the open window, wrapped around Natsumi, and snatched her right out of Inuyasha's bedroom.

Natsumi was mute with shock and terror, but Kazuki, who had lingered in the room to spend more time with her, shouted her name and leaped out of the window after her as she was drawn away from him, gripped in an unyielding, swiftly retracting tentacle.

The children that the royal party had just passed were still in the field, and the smaller ones were now crying loudly with fear and clinging to Satoshi as they saw Natsumi, whom they all knew and loved, being seized by the frightening spider lord.

"You!" Naraku snarled with a ferocious smile on his face as he slammed Natsumi to the grass without releasing her from his grip. "My runaway slave!"

The racoon girl had turned as pale as death. She uttered not a sound even though she must have felt the sharp physical pain of hard impact with the ground. Sheets of writing paper fluttered about; several sheets were crumpled between Naraku's tentacle and Natsumi's body.

Inuyasha's hand flew to his Tetsusaiga's hilt, and he was leaping towards Naraku to sever his tentacle in defence of Natsumi when Sesshomaru caught him by his robe and held him back.

Sesshomaru made certain that Minister Atsushi had a firm, restraining hand on Inuyasha's sash before he himself stepped towards the spider lord.

"Naraku!" Sesshomaru roared. "How dare any part of you trespass into my castle's royal wing?"

The demon lord's anger was palpable, and it shook some sense back into Naraku. Not enough, however, to make him release Natsumi. The polite mask quickly set back in place over the spider lord's features, and he smiled shakily, but his tentacle tightened its grip on the racoon demon girl and drew her closer to him.

"Let her go!" Inuyasha yelled, trying to squirm free of Minister Atsushi without injuring the old chieftain.

"Naraku!" Sesshomaru raised his voice again. "Your conduct is unacceptable!"

"Lord Sesshomaru," Naraku said in a deliberately pleasant voice that only shook very slightly with rage and loss of control. "This racoon demon is _my_ slave. She ran away from me sixty years ago. I am astonished that _you_ have her – perhaps the rumours I have heard about you also being in possession of my eldest daughter are true as well!"

"Get that fucking tentacle off her!" Inuyasha shouted. "You're hurting her!"

The prince was on the brink of slashing off his own sash to get away from Atsushi when a sudden blast of flame shot out of the sky above them and concentrated such a sharp, fierce burst of heat at Naraku's tentacle on its midpoint that the spider lord cursed in pain and loosened his hold on Natsumi, although he did not release her fully.

Everyone looked up in astonishment to see Totosai hovering above their heads on his flying cow, staring down at the scene.

"What is this outrage?" Naraku demanded shrilly. "Lord Sesshomaru, how dare one of your people attack your guest within your castle grounds? Who is that creature above us?"

"Naraku, do not think me as ignorant of etiquette as some others are," Sesshomaru said coldly. "I would never dream of permitting any of my people to attack a guest of mine. That fire demon you see above us, unfortunately, is _not_ one of my people."

"Indeed I am not!" Totosai exclaimed, blinking at Naraku. "I am no subject of this land. I wander freely through _many_ lands. Let's see now… was it 400 kingdoms I've passed through at the last count…? But I don't suppose you'd be interested in the details."

"Citizens of other lands are permitted such free access to the airspace over your castle?" Naraku asked Sesshomaru in disbelief.

"Not normally," Sesshomaru answered calmly. "That old fellow, however, was a good friend of my late father's, and he appears wherever and whenever he pleases."

"No better time to appear than when a damsel is in distress, is there?" Totosai murmured, descending to earth, dismounting and walking across the grass to peer at Natsumi, who was shaking with terror within the coil of Naraku's tentacle while Kazuki's attempts to free her from it with his bare hands and relatively small racoon claws were futile. "Such a pretty little thing! Now, if only I were two thousand years younger, I would… oh, but I see the young racoon fellow here glaring at me… I suppose he is your paramour… I'd better not try to relive my youth by kissing your lovely face, then…"

"What is this ridiculous creature chattering on about?" Naraku hissed to the rest of the party.

"Ridiculous?" Totosai echoed. "I? Ridiculous? Let's give you another blast of my firepower and see how ridiculous you find it! We'll be eating charred tentacle for tea, we all will!"

Totosai puffed up his cheeks to ready his flames for another attack, but Sesshomaru held up one hand to stop him and turned to Naraku, saying: "Naraku, I would strongly recommend that you release the girl. Those flames about to go your way are not to be trifled with – trust me, I would know."

Naraku seemed to weigh the pros and cons of backing down.

At last, very reluctantly, he uncoiled his tentacle from around Natsumi and drew it back into his body. He collected himself, then repeated to Sesshomaru in as calm a voice as he could muster: "The racoon demon girl is _my_ slave. She vanished from my castle sixty years ago."

"Indeed?" was Sesshomaru response. "Well, she is now _my_ servant."

"A master has the right to reclaim a runaway slave," Naraku said smoothly. "I never gave this girl leave to depart from my castle alive."

"A master does indeed have the right to claim his slave," Sesshomaru agreed. Inuyasha and Kazuki looked at the demon lord in surprise, but Sesshomaru was continuing to speak: "That gives us an interesting problem, as Minister Atsushi here is also the girl's master."

"Is that so?" Naraku asked, directing a pained smile in Atsushi's direction.

To his immense annoyance, Inuyasha now found himself – or rather, the back of his robes – passed into Minister Ryota's iron grip, as Minister Atsushi stepped forward.

"Lord Naraku, I am indeed the girl's rightful master," the old minister said. "I purchased her legally and in good faith, sixty years ago, from slave traders at the south-eastern border of this kingdom. I still have the papers to show that I made the purchase."

"Then perhaps you would be willing to sell her back to me?" Naraku proposed.

"I am afraid I cannot do that, Lord Naraku," Minister Atsushi answered. "For I gave her to Lord Sesshomaru as a gift. She may legally be my property, but she is no longer mine to give."

"I don't suppose Lord Sesshomaru would be willing to sell me one of his people?" Naraku asked, although it was plain from his voice and the look in his eyes that he knew he was fighting a losing battle.

"I do not sell my people, Naraku," Sesshomaru stated icily.

"Then I obviously have no hope of taking back this delightful creature."

"Lord Naraku, perhaps I might interest you in accepting some fine sculptures from my own collection at home?" Minister Atsushi suggested. "I hope it will be some compensation for having a single slave taken from you sixty years ago. Although I purchased her in good faith, I would not want you to lose out in a transaction you did not authorise."

Naraku was _very_ fond of stone sculptures, having few craftsmen in his lands who were good at that particular form of art, and Minister Atsushi knew it well.

"I agree that it might be a fair exchange," the spider lord murmured, his avarice and love of fine things overcoming his desire to reclaim a girl who would eventually have died at his hands in any case. Besides, Totosai seemed to be puffing out his cheeks again; with him standing so close, it seemed wiser to offer no further resistance.

"I am so pleased to hear that," Atsushi said. "I shall send for the finest pieces from my town house gallery at once, and you may see if any or all of them are to your liking."

The immediate crisis thus passed. Kazuki quickly lifted Natsumi into his arms and hurried back into the castle with her, escorted into the royal wing by Totosai. Inuyasha accompanied them to the nearest entrance to the castle before walking over to Satoshi and the children to make sure that the little ones were all right.

The smallest of the group, the fox kit he had patted when he had first met them some days ago, was so frightened that he had jumped into Satoshi's arms and was clutching the healer's tunic in his paws, which had balled up into tight little fists. "It's all right now," Inuyasha said to him, leaning towards the child and stroking his head to reassure him. "The bad spider lord won't hurt Natsumi any more. She's safe and well."

"Natsumi will be okay?" the fox kit asked, staring at the prince through wide green eyes that glittered with tears.

"She'll be okay," he told the child, and gave the same assurance to the others around them. "We all like Natsumi, right?"

"Natsumi is nice," another child agreed in a hushed voice. "That spider lord is _not_."

"She is very nice. And she's fine now. That horrid fellow will never touch her again."

"Thank you for reassuring the little ones, Your Highness," Satoshi said. "They are quite upset, but I know they are brave children, and they will be right as rain in no time at all. If you would like me to attend to Natsumi, I would be honoured to do so."

"Yes, please," Inuyasha said gratefully. To a guard nearby, he said: "Please tell the guards outside my room that I want Satoshi to treat Natsumi for her injuries."

"Yes, Your Highness."

Jaken and some of the other staff who worked near the royal wing had rushed into the field when they had heard the commotion, and Jaken now offered to take charge of the children while Satoshi saw to Natsumi.

"Thank you, Jaken-sensei," the healer and the prince said to the little kappa demon.

"I will talk the children through this to make sure they don't become too traumatised by it," Jaken promised the prince as Satoshi hurried back to his office to pick up his medical equipment. "I believe Lord Sesshomaru is waiting for you to rejoin them before they continue through the grounds."

Inuyasha thanked him in return, then walked back to his brother's side.

The tour of the gardens did continue, despite the prince's hope that the ruckus would have made Sesshomaru or Naraku decide to terminate it early.

He spent the entire time glaring at the back of Naraku's head, for he refused to walk up front with the spider lord.

Only when Sesshomaru took the opportunity of a moment when no one was looking to slip his hand into Inuyasha's and squeeze it firmly did the prince relax at last and stop glowering at the back of the group, or fantasising about driving the Tetsusaiga clean through Naraku's heart.

At the end of the garden tour, Minister Atsushi invited Naraku to one of the meeting rooms, to which his aides had rushed over some of the best sculptures from his town house.

"These are wonderful," Naraku purred, taking his time to run his hands and eyes over the pieces, seeming to be especially taken by a quartet of life-sized, white-marble human beauties sculpted in such flawlessly natural fashion that their hair, scarves and dresses seemed to flow with the wind. It disturbed Inuyasha that Naraku seemed particularly taken by one of the statues whose face very much resembled Kikyo's countenance in her youth.

"If Lord Naraku is pleased by the four beauties, I would be delighted to give them to him," Minister Atsushi said.

"I would be delighted to receive them. Thank you, Minister," Naraku said.

Inuyasha was disgusted by the spider lord's grasping nature, and upset that Minister Atsushi was losing pieces of art that he obviously treasured. But his spirits – and those of all the other dog demons present – lifted when Totosai appeared in the doorway of the meeting room, and Naraku quickly made his next declaration.

"I had not planned to make this a long visit," said the spider lord. "I thank Lord Sesshomaru for his generous hospitality, but this is perhaps a good time for me to take my leave, before I outstay my welcome."

Sesshomaru inclined his head in acknowledgement of Naraku's decision. He and his ministers were surprised, for they had all thought that Naraku would impose on them for several more days to come, Totosai or no Totosai.

His sudden haste to leave was, however, not unwelcome to them; no one tried to invite him to remain any longer.

With surprising speed, the spider lord, his children and his entourage had packed up by teatime and were escorted to the border by a group of guards, where they vanished into their own lands along with Minister Atsushi's marble sculptures.

More good news came in the shape of a letter notifying them that the soldiers who had been sent to the southern provinces to help repair the damage from the floods had completed their duties, rebuilt the village houses, and would be on their way back within the day.

The castle felt like a brighter, safer place.


	32. Trust

"Forgive me for being the cause of so much trouble," Natsumi cried, pressing her forehead to the floorboards of the meeting room which Sesshomaru, Inuyasha, Totosai and the ministers had withdrawn to before their evening meal. "Minister Atsushi, I have cost you far more than my life is worth. I am so sorry. I know how you treasure the works of art you collect."

She was bruised and bandaged in several places. However, she had suffered no serious injuries, a fact that Satoshi had confirmed privately with Inuyasha after carefully examining the attendant.

"What an absurd thing to say," Atsushi said, going over to her and raising her to her feet. "No life as good as yours is worth any amount of goods or money. I am most pleased to have redeemed, twice, a young demon who has proven so pleasing to my king and my prince."

"Yeah, stop apologising for being alive, Natsumi!" Inuyasha said in his inimitable way. "You're worth a gazillion Narakus! I wish _someone_ hadn't stopped me from hacking off his ugly tentacle when he snatched you out of the window!"

The incident had fired his spirit, and made him forget all about his earlier doubts about whether he should have progressed so fast and so far with Sesshomaru. In fact, he felt feisty enough at the moment to go through several rounds of no-holds-barred sword-fighting with his brother.

"If _someone_ had not stopped you from doing exactly that, the field would have filled with toxic fumes, and Natsumi, the kitchen fellow with her, the children and the gardening staff would all have been poisoned on the spot," Sesshomaru growled in response.

"I could have dispersed the fumes with a swing of the Tetsusaiga, like Totosai taught me!" Inuyasha insisted.

"And taken an entire wing of the castle along with it, I'm sure," Sesshomaru said. "You need a good deal more training with that sword under Totosai's tutelage and mine before you wield it for anything other than hand-to-hand combat. By the way, what was that kitchen servant doing in the royal wing?"

"I asked Kazuki to stay and keep Natsumi company while she had her lunch in my room. I told the guards he was the only one permitted to bring her meals to her. _And_ I am not _that_ bad with my sword!"

Sesshomaru let it go and dismissed Natsumi, who withdrew gratefully, still upset at the thought of how much the minister had given to save her.

The royal siblings, Totosai and the two ministers then began to dissect Naraku's visit.

"I am certain that something happened when Kanna's mirror shattered in the art gallery in the north wing, or when Hakudoshi dropped in uninvited on Inuyasha in the library," Sesshomaru said. "Inuyasha noticed a fragment still missing from Kanna's mirror. They claimed that the mirror needs time to repair itself fully, but I am more inclined to believe that the shard was left somewhere – have my security staff finished scouring the gallery for it?"

"Your staff have combed every inch of the gallery," Minister Atsushi said. "However, they have indicated that they would prefer to go over the place once more along with the member of the housekeeping staff who is assigned to look after the gallery and its pieces of art."

"Why did they not do so with that person from the beginning?" Sesshomaru asked.

They sent for the head of security, who explained: "My lord, the person they need is ill."

"Ill? How did that happen?"

"My lord, many guards had to be redeployed to cover the duties of those sent to deal with the floods; some housekeeping staff were also reassigned to more urgent and sensitive tasks covering both housekeeping and security. The art galleries were not a security-sensitive area, so we withdrew the housekeeping staff from them and reassigned them to areas requiring more of our trusted staff in attendance. The custodian of the gallery in the north wing was put on night-watch duty in the administration wing. He reported hearing a suspicious noise last night and went out to one of the balconies to check on it, when he was bitten by a centipede."

"A _centipede_?" Sesshomaru asked.

"Yes, my lord. Not a centipede demon, but an animal centipede. Such a bite would normally cause a demon no problems, but he felt extreme pain, and the healer said that the animal had most probably bitten a snake-demon or some other venomous demon just before biting our guard. The wound has affected him enough to leave him feverish in the staff infirmary. As it was an incident involving a mere animal, and not a situation involving any of the visitors, I did not think it necessary before this to trouble Your Majesty with the details. I ask your pardon if that was a mistake on my part."

"He detected no foreign demon presence before, during or after the incident?"

"No, my lord."

"If he is not critically ill, have him carried into the gallery and ensure that he checks every piece of art and every inch of the walls and floors," Sesshomaru ordered. "Then if he remains lucid, question him in greater detail about what happened last night, and give me a thorough report."

"Yes, my lord," the chief of security replied, before retreating from the room.

Left to themselves again, they set aside the matter of the spider children's behaviour and the centipede bite pending a fuller investigation, and discussed the suddenness of Naraku's departure.

"I do not like it that he left so abruptly, after such a short stay," Minister Ryota said. "The last two times he came, he tarried a whole week on each occasion. Something prompted him to go early this time."

"It had to be Totosai's unexpected appearance," Inuyasha said.

"It won't be the first time I've frightened people away," Totosai muttered, more to himself than to anyone else. He was sitting on the bare floor again, facing the others who sat on cushions around a low table, but his mind seeming to be a thousand miles away. He had returned from the forest patch with Sesshomaru and Inuyasha a while ago, after spending some time telling Bokusen'o about all that had happened.

"Possibly, but not necessarily so," Ryota murmured. "One such as Naraku would be intrigued, not driven away, by the appearance of such a powerful demon."

"Could it be that he was embarrassed by his loss of control over Natsumi?" Inuyasha asked.

"Your Highness, Lord Naraku is much too thick-skinned for one instance of loss of self-control to upset him into changing his plans," Minister Atsushi said.

"His leaving like that has an air of his either having obtained something he wanted, or having decided that he could not obtain something he desired," was Sesshomaru's assessment.

"It can't be my sculptures," Atsushi mused. "There's nothing unusual about the sculptures themselves apart from their exquisite craftsmanship. The marble itself is of high quality, but is otherwise ordinary enough."

"The sculptures were probably nothing more than icing on the cake – an invisible cake we cannot see yet," Ryota murmured thoughtfully. "There's something else going on."

"He hoped for a mating alliance, but did not get one despite repeated attempts to persuade Lord Sesshomaru to agree to one," Atsushi remarked. "Can it be that he abruptly concluded it was useless and decided to retreat?"

"Without first imposing on us for several more days and enjoying our hospitality to the full?" Sesshomaru asked rhetorically. "That is most unlike Naraku."

"It might have something to do with what I overheard in the forest," Inuyasha spoke, suddenly remembering that he had not had time before this to tell Sesshomaru about Kanna's magic mirror.

"What did you overhear?"

"Kanna asked the mirror who the fairest in this land was, and the mirror said it was you," Inuyasha told his brother, with a tiny smirk on his face at the thought of how even magical objects knew that Sesshomaru was the most splendid creature in the kingdom. "Then she asked who the fairest of their clan was, and it answered 'Kagura'. Hakudoshi said he knew from that answer that Kagura had to be alive."

"Are Kagura's bodyguards still with her?" Sesshomaru asked Atsushi.

"Yes, my lord," the minister replied. "She will keep them with her for a few more days, until we are certain that no danger to her remains."

"Good. In the meantime, have our security guards scour the castle. Make certain that they have left nothing and no one behind," Sesshomaru ordered. "Natsumi can resume sleeping in her own quarters again, but I want two guards posted outside her door all night for the next few nights. We will have no problems assigning staff to such duties now that the soldiers have returned from the south."

Dinner was announced, and the five ate a peaceful meal in the dining hall, unburdened far sooner than they had expected to be of Naraku's smothering presence.

…

"Contradicting me in front of the ministers and attendants?" Sesshomaru growled at Inuyasha when they were back in the royal wing after seeing Totosai to Bokusen'o's forest patch for the night. "I judge that you need more training with your sword and you insist that you are not bad with it, in front of everyone else?"

Inuyasha's ears flickered downward a shade, but rose defiantly again as he grumbled in response: "Well, I really am not _that_ bad with the Tetsusaiga. You make me out to be some kind of klutz."

Having sent word to all their room attendants that they had no need of their services this evening, they entered Sesshomaru's room and closed the door behind them, shutting out the world.

"I should punish you for talking back at me in front of others," Sesshomaru remarked, shedding his robes quickly and watching Inuyasha with an appreciative eye as the boy pulled off his outer layers of clothing.

"Yeah, yeah, you keep going on about spanking me till my bottom is too sore to sit down on – I'm starting to think you have a spanking fetish."

"You truly are an insolent creature," Sesshomaru growled, waiting until Inuyasha had unknotted the ties of his trouser underlayer and had dropped them to about his knee level before pouncing on him and trapping him against the wall beside the bed.

"I didn't say I was ready to get frisky with someone who insults my sword-wielding skills," Inuyasha growled back, struggling to free his ankles from the trousers.

"Whatever happened to that obedient little puppy who did exactly as he was told on his first night home?" Sesshomaru purred, a hand cupping Inuyasha's bottom, knowing as he spoke the words that he was risking a lashing from Inuyasha for reminding him of those traumatic first few days back in the castle. "I was obviously fooled by his compliance – he's really a wild beast with a sharp tongue and vicious manners."

Inuyasha stuck his tongue out at Sesshomaru.

"I did warn you that your tongue would be on my menu tonight, did I not, little brother?" Sesshomaru asked with a smile. "I see you're offering it to me very willingly now."

The half-demon's tongue shot back into his mouth, but Sesshomaru pressed his lips to Inuyasha's and drew that tantalising piece of flesh back out, seducing it and luring it into his own mouth. But when he himself probed Inuyasha's mouth, he unexpectedly found his tongue seized gently but firmly between sharp teeth, which were applying warning pressure.

Those fangs were soon replaced by the lethal sharpness of claws – Inuyasha had drawn his face away from him and was now pinching the demon lord's tongue between his thumb and forefinger. "Maybe I should have _your_ tongue for dinner instead," the boy murmured with a grin. "This bad, bad tongue which has said such nasty things in the past…"

Sesshomaru would have given a stern reply, were it not that he literally could not move his tongue to speak. He answered with a smouldering glare and pinched Inuyasha's butt sharply. But the half-demon still would not release his tongue.

So Sesshomaru put both his hands under his little brother's bottom, lifted him up, tangled trousers and all, and deposited him in the middle of the bed very carefully, while his tongue remained imprisoned, and a cheeky grin remained plastered all over Inuyasha's face.

"You're starting to drool," the prince commented, amused. "You obviously need some help with keeping clean, you messy dog."

Inuyasha raised his head, and started to lick the tiny trail of saliva that was running down his fingers and making its way down his wrist. He licked up, and up, until he reached the tip of Sesshomaru's tongue. Only then did his claws let go.

Sesshomaru still could not speak, for he was now locked in a deep kiss with Inuyasha, and enjoying the feeling of the boy squirming under him as he continued to struggle to disentangle his ankles from his undertrousers.

At last his feet came free of the fabric. He wrapped his legs around Sesshomaru's waist and flipped them both over so that he was on top of the demon lord. He pulled away from the kiss, and stared down at Sesshomaru who lay beneath him.

"Doesn't look like I'm the one who's on the dessert menu tonight," Inuyasha remarked, for Sesshomaru was totally naked, while he still had his white shift on.

"I can change that in a second," Sesshomaru answered, pulling Inuyasha's shift over his head and off his body in a fluid move.

"Only because I allowed it," Inuyasha grinned.

"That is true," Sesshomaru conceded.

The demon lord fell silent then, gazing up at the charmingly wide-eyed creature who straddled him like a puppy playing at being dominant – except that this pup, with his muscular body and thighs like iron, was quite physically capable of challenging him for dominance if he really chose to exert his strength.

So it was a mark of how much trust he placed in Inuyasha that when the younger one leaned down and kissed him in the hollow of his throat, between his collarbones, Sesshomaru simply closed his eyes and tilted his head back, baring his neck.

"I still think…" Inuyasha said, between this kiss and the next which he planted on Sesshomaru's chest. "…that we rushed into it…" Another kiss and a light flick of the tongue over one nipple. "…but you didn't take advantage of me…" Kissing his way over to the other nipple and testing his teeth lightly against, drawing a tiny groan from the demon lord. "…because it was my choice too… and I wanted you…" A slow kiss and trail of the tongue over Sesshomaru's taut abdominals. "…and I know you wanted me…" A kiss and lick high on his right hip. "…and if what you were telling me over lunch was that you choose me to be your companion… then I accept."

Inuyasha followed that up with a firm caress of Sesshomaru's thickly erect, weeping organ, stroking it with one hand and capping it with his mouth over the tip, teasing the smooth head with his tongue and exploring the slit from which beads of fluid were emerging to be licked up by him.

How he had hated doing this very deed on his first night home, and how much he was starting to enjoy it now that he could see through fearless eyes its effect on his lord and brother, who was arching his body and moaning under his hand and mouth.

Sesshomaru had wanted to answer Inuyasha at the close of his seductive speech, interspersed with those maddening little licks and kisses. But the boy had obviously acquired a variety of ways to render him speechless, from deep lip-locks to claws threatening his tongue, and now this – this seamless pairing of a strong fist and sweetly hot mouth both wrapped tightly about his shaft from base to tip, moving up and down in what seemed to be the perfect rhythm, leaving the demon lord feeling as if he was incapable of anything other than complete surrender.

Inuyasha was in control for now, and he literally milked it for all it was worth. One part of him wanted badly to please Sesshomaru without a fault, and the other impish part of him idled with the thought that this was sweet revenge for all the ways he had been manipulated in the past – for it was wonderful to hear Sesshomaru panting helplessly, to glance upward and see the flash of pleasure and pain across his face as he withheld a stroke for half a beat while pinching his butt, and to feel that thick, _perfect_ cock swell and harden even further in his mouth, throbbing in a plea for release.

He allowed himself to be evil for just a moment as he removed his mouth from his organ but carried on with his hand while he slid up alongside Sesshomaru's body to kiss his pointed left ear and whisper into it: "So have you an answer for me, Sesshomaru? I have accepted you – what do you say now?"

The eyelids opened a crack, and underneath the fiery desperation for climax that swirled in their depths was a glint of a warning: _When we are done here I shall spank you till…_

But the old threat held no fear for Inuyasha any more, and he kissed Sesshomaru on the mouth again, stealing his panted breath and any words that might have come, until Sesshomaru threw back his head, broke the kiss and gasped: "I accept you – I more than accept you – Inuyasha –"

Only then did Inuyasha bend his mouth to the tip of Sesshomaru's member again, remove his hand, and take him as far in as he could without choking, pleasuring him perfectly until Sesshomaru's seed exploded into his throat and waves of utter satisfaction and relief rocked the demon lord's body, until the last ripple of physical tension had melted away into pure contentment.

Inuyasha swallowed and released Sesshomaru from his mouth, then lay on top of him, keeping his damp organ ensconced beneath the warmth of his thighs until it softened almost completely, by which time Sesshomaru was gazing up at him through sun-coloured peepers that had not entirely lost their threatening message, despite the warmth flooding them.

Inuyasha gave him little pecks and nibbles on the chin and along his jawline to appease him, an instinctive dog-demon action which worked very well on the dog-demon king, for the fire in his eyes grew gentle, and he drew Inuyasha's head onto his chest.

They rested quietly for some time. But when Inuyasha stirred some minutes later, a sharp hand landed hard and swift on his backside, which stung to a surprising degree.

"Ow!" he yelled. "What was _that_ for?"

"That was for teasing me, and for playing at dominating me – did you really think I would let it pass?"

Inuyasha rubbed his butt with the flat of his hand to soothe the sting, but he had a grin on his face. "Well, I was good at it, wasn't I?"

"You were passable," Sesshomaru murmured, wrapping his arms around the delectable body covering his own. Softening his voice further, he said gently into one downy ear: "And you are the only one in the entire world I would permit to take such liberties with me."

He nibbled on the tip of that ear, making it flick in response, and then it was Sesshomaru's turn to tease and pleasure the boy, returning in full what he had been given, taking Inuyasha to the very brink of physical desire until he shamelessly cried out Sesshomaru's name – and not caring a whit who heard him.

"You may think we rushed into it, but I do not think it happened a moment too soon," whispered Sesshomaru as he cradled Inuyasha afterwards. "I am more pleased than I can say that you are mine – my own, my chosen companion – I could not have made a better choice."

…

Sesshomaru did not entirely like it that Inuyasha returned to his own room at dawn. If he had had it his way, the demon lord would have been pleased to have risen from bed, bathed, dressed and breakfasted with his little brother without once letting him out of his sight. It was his dominant nature, wanting to keep what he cherished close to him at all times, except when work demands required him to set aside his private life for a while.

But Inuyasha was independent and half-human, and his years of fending for himself had left an indelible mark on his nature, which would seek solitude and silence from time to time. He needed his space. He did not actually say so, but his aura communicated his need to be alone.

Sesshomaru reluctantly acknowledged that and let him go to his room for the two hours they had before breakfast.

Over breakfast with Totosai and the ministers in the dining hall, they exchanged looks and hidden smiles, most of which were not as hidden from their companions as they might have imagined.

Totosai and the ministers exchanged looks of their own – different looks which told one another of their relief that neither the king nor the prince would be likely to end up mated to any of the spider demons now – or to any individuals from other lands, the way things were going.

Sesshomaru left the breakfast table that morning knowing that Inuyasha would be having his lessons with Jaken out of doors, in the company of Bokusen'o and Totosai, after which Totosai was to take him through more training with the Tetsusaiga.

He parted with him with his usual kiss on the forehead – which today was returned by a quick peck on the lips – and said to him as he so often did: "I shall see you at dinnertime."

But by mid-afternoon, when the ministers and their staff had left for their own homes, Sesshomaru was aching to be close to Inuyasha again. He decided on a whim to abandon his work and spend the rest of the day with him, only to discover when he went in search of him that the prince had left the castle grounds.

"His Highness has just gone out," the head of security confirmed when Sesshomaru checked with him regarding what his own nose and demon senses had already told him. "He was chaperoned by Jaken-sensei, as you had specified he ought to be on such outings. They took two guards with them, as you instructed. His Highness said he had waited until our headcount of soldiers and guards was back at its full complement before setting out on his first excursion."

"I see," Sesshomaru said evenly, although he was disappointed that Inuyasha had gone out. "It is good that they are following my instructions to the letter."

They were not followed all the way, unfortunately, for it was not until three hours later that the prince returned to the castle, when the sun was already very low in the sky. Sesshomaru had previously said that Inuyasha should not be out for more than two hours at a time, and here he was exceeding the time limits on his very first outing!

"Inuyasha, you are late," Sesshomaru said sternly when the prince returned at last. He had been worried enough to have paced his office and looked out of the window every so often – an illogical act, for he could not see the main gates of the castle from the administration wing.

He had been hard put to pay full attention to the report that the chief of security came to give him regarding the housekeeping servant's account and the combing of the north-wing art gallery – no shard was to be found, although the servant had found two holes side by side in the base of a sculpture which had not had such holes in it before. Shards of something or other might have hidden there before either being moved by someone, or moving away under their own power.

The report gave him much to ponder. But immediately upon being informed that the prince was in sight of the guards at the main gate, he was anxious enough to put the written account aside and walk right up to the front entrance of the castle building to meet his brother.

"It's _my_ fault," Inuyasha said quickly, when he observed the cold golden glare slide over to Jaken and the guards. "I got carried away with all the interesting sights in the town. Jaken-sensei and the guards did advise me to return, but I was too caught up with looking at all the shops and the new houses and one of the schools."

Sesshomaru dismissed Jaken and the escorts with a nod before leading his brother back into the royal wing, where he said to him in private: "I did explain my reasons for not wanting you outside the safety of the castle grounds for more than two hours at a time – yet you have disobeyed me."

"I'm sorry – I really forgot the time, even after I was reminded that I would be late, I kept thinking there would be more time to see more of the town. I'm sorry, Sesshomaru." He was particularly upset because he had wanted to prove to Sesshomaru, ever since his return from the village, that he could be trusted with more responsibilities.

"You know that I don't want any harm to come to you," Sesshomaru emphasised, speaking more gently when it occurred to him that Inuyasha had never lived in a big town, and had probably never been able to visit one safely until now. He would therefore have been fascinated by the variety of life and activity there.

"I know," Inuyasha said, his ears drooping.

"If you want to see more of the town, I can take you there myself tomorrow," Sesshomaru told him with a hint of a smile, feeling guilty that he had never offered to take him there before. "Then you can explore all you like."

His generosity was rewarded by a huge smile from the half-demon, and an equally big hug. "You'll really come with me?" Inuyasha asked, looking up at his big brother out of a happy face that Sesshomaru could only hope to see more of.

"Yes," he said. "I should not reward your poor timekeeping with another outing, but perhaps it is my fault that you have not seen the town until now."

Inuyasha nuzzled him gratefully and said in a cheeky voice: "You can always punish me some _other_ way."

"Such as?"

"Well, you can send me to my room without dinner."

"And?"

"Oh, you know, what you keep going on and on about."

"You mean this?" Sesshomaru asked, running a hand over Inuyasha's pert bottom.

"Mm-hmm," Inuyasha said, squeezing his eyes shut and burying his face in Sesshomaru's chest, for he could imagine what was coming.

But instead of ordering him to drop his trousers and bend over at once, Sesshomaru instead pinched the prince's left butt-cheek so hard that Inuyasha turned quite red in the face.

"Ouch! Bloody hell, that hurts!" the boy protested, gasping out his words, for the pinch was a truly wicked one.

"I know," Sesshomaru said calmly.

"Damn it, I think I'd prefer the spanking!"

"Believe me, you wouldn't."

"Ow…" Inuyasha groaned, as the spot continued to smart although Sesshomaru had removed his fingers.

" _That_ was your punishment for coming home late. But as we have quite a bit of time before dinner, I can make very sure that I will be thorough about kissing it all better…"

So Inuyasha did have to drop his trousers, but not for a spanking after all. And Sesshomaru did not have the heart to deprive him of his dinner, so he eventually went down to the dining hall with perky ears and in a playful mood, looking forward to the promised visit to the town on the morrow.


	33. A Certain Someone

"This is as far as I got yesterday!" Inuyasha said excitedly, pointing to a toy shop with a display of tiny wood-and-metal carts with wheels that could be set on a sloping ramp with raised sides and made to whirl around in a circuit. "I'd never seen anything like this before, so I spent a lot more time here than I should have looking at the way the carts go round the track."

"You should have bought it so that you could look at it all you liked," Sesshomaru said.

"Nah – what would I do with that? I'm not a small child any more. I wouldn't buy it for the village children either, because knowing how overexcited they get about toys, they'd only break it within minutes! I did buy a few items for the children of the two guards who came with me – I don't think it was their idea of a fun day out, but they were very patient."

"As well they _should_ be – it is their duty to make sure that you do not get into trouble, no matter where you go or what you choose to amuse yourself with," Sesshomaru replied.

"I don't like dragging other people around with me on outings that they have no personal interest in."

"You will get used to it. You are a prince. It is natural to have people attending on you at almost all times."

"I like to be alone sometimes," Inuyasha said quietly.

"I understand that," Sesshomaru assured him. "And I respect that need – but when you are in a public place, you must be chaperoned and preferably with guards close at hand. Even when you come of age and no longer require a chaperone, I will insist that you take at least one reliable guard with you whenever you leave the castle without me – you must not be entirely unaccompanied."

They were at the next shop by now, one which sold a variety of edible goods. Many of the items were suitable only for demons – herbs, mushrooms and dried raw meat from poisonous animals that would have sickened humans who tried to eat them. As Inuyasha had grown up among humans, he was fascinated by the displays, and asked the shopkeeper about several of the items.

"Would this kill a half-demon like me?" he asked innocently, picking up a mushroom with a speckled gray surface.

"Your Highness," the shopkeeper replied honestly. "I truly would not know, as I have very few half-demon customers, and most of them do not buy the more unusual mushrooms. However, I believe that all the items we have are quite safe for strong half-demons to consume. I only warn the few human traders passing through this town not to purchase them for themselves – we have other mushrooms that are safe for them to eat."

"Maybe I should get some of these for Kazuki – he was just talking about experimenting with various mushrooms for a new kind of stew, and I'm sure I've never seen these served to us, so he probably doesn't have them in the kitchen."

"Kazuki? That kitchen servant who jumped out of your window after Natsumi?" Sesshomaru asked, bemused.

"Yeah – he's a nice fellow, and he's an assistant cook. Don't give me that look – just because you don't talk to the servants doesn't mean I can't."

Inuyasha asked the shopkeeper to wrap up a quantity of the mushrooms for him, and paid for them himself out of his coin purse.

A few guards followed them at a discreet distance. Sesshomaru was powerful enough to require no protection, but it looked more proper to have a security presence around the king and the prince on an outing, and they would be useful for keeping the people at a distance if the brothers needed some privacy.

"The junior officers can hold your purchases for you," Sesshomaru told Inuyasha.

But Inuyasha did not see the point of handing stuff he could easily hold to someone else. "As if I can't carry a small package like this by myself," he replied.

Sesshomaru said nothing, but as they moved from shop to shop, and different things caught the prince's eye, the junior officer had to be given parcel-carrying duties after all, as Inuyasha had only two hands.

It interested Sesshomaru to see that all the items Inuyasha purchased were for other people – the mushrooms for Kazuki, a hairpin for Natsumi, storybooks from a shop near one of the schools for the castle children, knotted fabric amulets that he intended to give to the village children on his next visit, and a fine writing brush for Jaken.

"The brushes he uses in our lessons are getting a bit ratty, but he refuses to draw new ones from the stationery store – maybe this nice brush will shame him into using better ones when he teaches me!" Inuyasha grinned.

Sesshomaru was pleased to see that the boy was careful with his money, not overspending on anything, and always checking that he was paying a reasonable price for the items he wanted.

As they moved away from the street with the smaller shops that interested Inuyasha and entered the busier town centre with its wider roads, bigger shops selling more general goods, and grander houses, the guards had to position themselves before and behind the royal brothers to ensure that the crowd did not press in too closely.

"Now I'm not sure that you coming with me was such a good idea after all," Inuyasha remarked as people bowed to him and Sesshomaru from each side of every road they walked down, distracting him from his aim of appreciating the architecture of the stone and wood structures that surrounded them, trying to see different styles and eras reflected in them as Jaken had advised him to in a recent lesson.

"I'm sure the people also acknowledged you yesterday when you visited."

"Yes, but not to such an extreme – I think they're afraid of you."

"Nonsense. I have tortured only ninety demons from this town in my two hundred years of rule, and only ten of those died from their injuries – that's not many."

Inuyasha stared at him, horrified, until he realised that his brother was joking. "Don't joke about things like that!" he hissed. "It's not funny!"

"All right. The truth is that only one demon from this town has ever been executed by royal command for heading a band of demons guilty of raping and pillaging. And that execution had the full support of everyone here."

"Uh-huh. Everywhere I look in your past, there's blood, gore and sex somewhere. _Please_ tell me that's _not_ the family of the demon you executed."

A group of dog demons was bowing low to them as they drew close, inching out into the road before them and standing out from the other townspeople with their smart, neat tunics, all of the same pale-blue shade.

"No, Inuyasha, that is a group of servants from Minister Atsushi's town house."

They stopped before the group, who bowed low again. The one at the head of the group addressed them respectfully: "My lord, Your Highness, Minister Atsushi wishes us to convey the message that he received Your Majesty's instructions about not making a fuss over your visit to this town, and that he has obeyed your order by not making any announcements to the people about it. However, the minister says he would be most honoured if Your Majesty and Your Highness would stop by at his home for some light refreshment, now that the sun is high in the sky, and it is getting hot."

Sesshomaru looked at Inuyasha and saw that he did not object to the idea, so he assented, and they strolled down two roads to the minister's town residence.

Minister Atsushi himself greeted them at the gate, apologising for not having met them himself on the main road, saying sensibly: "I had to make certain that all was ready here for you – after having been shown so much hospitality and consideration by everyone at the castle, how could I do any less for my lord and prince in return? Did your godfather Totosai not come with you?"

"He waved us off in the morning, telling us that he had seen more towns in his three thousand and five hundred years of life than he ever needed to see again, and that the females in the countryside are much prettier," Inuyasha related, rolling his golden eyes and making the minister laugh as they stepped into his home.

It was an elegant house, much smaller, as Inuyasha later learnt, compared with the minister's estate out in the country, but compact and tasteful.

They were led into a welcoming, airy room with translucent paper screens and light sliding doors. Cool tea and refreshing fruit like spring melons, sliced pears drizzled with plum sauce, and strawberries were set out invitingly. The guards had another room next door to rest in, with their own spread of tea and fruit.

Inuyasha noticed some small figurines displayed on a side cabinet in the room, and saw with interest that they were similar in material and form to the much larger sculptures that Naraku had taken away.

"Were they carved by the same sculptor?" the prince asked the minister.

"Yes, Your Highness. The sculptor was named Haruka, and he was a fellow guild member of your father's old friend, the elder and late Hosenki. He passed away, of old age, about thirty years ago. I treasure his works greatly, but I treasure Natsumi more – she lived with me for five years, and I am very fond of her."

"One of the sculptures you gave to Naraku, and this small figurine here, really look a lot like my friend Kikyo from the village – at least, very much the way she looked when she was a girl."

"Old Haruka used to go around the kingdom looking for pretty models on whom to base his art," said Atsushi. "He found both human and demon females worthy of his artistic attention – you may have noticed that almost all the figurines you see on that cabinet represent human women. This particular figurine that you say resembles your friend was, if I remember correctly, modelled on a real-life priestess, as was the larger sculpture. Is your friend a priestess?"

"She is!" Inuyasha exclaimed. "So it _is_ her! I wonder if she knows that a demon artist was studying her – she's never mentioned anything of the sort to me."

"Haruka did tell me that the priestess he found so very pretty was attacked by another demon in the woods not long after he began observing her. He said a creature clad from head to foot in the pelt of a white baboon assaulted the girl and attempted to rape her, but before he could go to her aid, her assailant was apparently wounded by some other source he could not see, and fled the scene in what looked liked great pain and distress. He helped the girl back to her village, and she and her younger sister – who was only a very small child – thanked him calmly. I remember now that he said she showed no fear of him although he was a demon, and she had just been attacked by one – a rare thing for such a young human girl."

"Did he say when that incident took place?" Inuyasha asked, his voice tightening.

Minister Atsushi thought about it for some time and counted back the years, then replied: "I cannot be certain, but I believe that fifty years ago would be a fair estimate of when the event occurred. He has been dead these thirty years, and when he spoke to me of the incident some seven or eight years before his death, he mentioned it as something that had taken place thirteen or fourteen years earlier, so fifty is my best figure for you."

"Then it must have been just a year or two before _I_ first met Kikyo and Kaede," Inuyasha murmured. "She's never told me anything about it – who was the _bastard_ in the baboon fur? Why didn't Kikyo tell me?"

"Inuyasha," Sesshomaru spoke, hearing the anger and grief in his brother's voice. "I am sure that the priestess Kikyo did not wish to distress you with upsetting stories about demons from before she knew you, knowing how angry and sad you would be for her, and how self-conscious you would feel since you were half-demon. I imagine that she saw how much of a child you were when she first became your friend, and sensibly chose not to tell you of a time when she had nearly been raped. As time passed, it must have seemed to her less and less necessary to inform you about the incident. Don't let it upset you now."

"If I ever catch the baboon freak I'm going to tear him apart."

"I know you will. Now sit down and don't waste Minister's Atsushi's efforts to have these refreshments prepared for us."

"I'm sorry. Yes, I suppose you are right – it was in the past, and it looks like Kikyo was ultimately unharmed."

"I am sure that she suffered no lasting harm, from what Haruka told me," Atsushi assured him.

When Inuyasha settled down at last and began to eat and drink what was set before him, the minister said to Sesshomaru: "My lord, besides repaying your hospitality, I also hoped that you would come because I have a private message for you from that certain someone whose safety we were concerned about."

"Is she well?" Sesshomaru asked.

Inuyasha, who knew by now that they were discussing Kagura, listened keenly.

"She is very well, and wishes me to let you know that. She also says that you and the prince are more than welcome to visit her while you are in town."

"Perhaps we shall," Sesshomaru said, glancing at Inuyasha, who looked back at him in the most distracting way possible, lips rosy with strawberry juice while one of his fingers absently stroked the side of his fine porcelain teacup.

"Is she nice?" was the prince's only question.

…

Kagura was very nice, in a sardonic way. She was also very cheeky, in an ironically serious way. And she looked and smelt disturbingly like Naraku – dark hair, red irises and all – which periodically put Inuyasha off, until she would turn to look at him full in the face out of her sparkling garnet eyes. Each time she did that, he would see how different her soul was from Naraku's.

"I may resemble my disowned father, and I smell like the rest of my family, but I know that alone won't be enough to scare off someone like you, Your Highness," Kagura said in a manner that was somehow both playful and dignified.

She tapped her fan lightly against the palm of her left hand as she looked at him appraisingly.

They sat in one of her rooms, which was filled with dark wood and stone sculptures and enclosed on all sides for her privacy and safety. Yet, the room somehow felt breezy and spacious because of cleverly positioned slats and openings installed in the outer blinds of the double-layered walls all around her town house. They let in the breeze and allowed glowing rays of sunlight to slip indoors.

"Someone like me?" Inuyasha asked, finding himself unable to dislike her despite her looks and scent.

"Courage is written all over your face, and your aura is as strong as any demon's I have ever encountered, except Lord Sesshomaru's."

Sesshomaru said nothing, and only sipped the tea they had been served, but Inuyasha could tell that his brother was calm and completely relaxed. It could only mean that he trusted Kagura greatly, and that he liked her.

It gave Inuyasha a tiny pang of jealousy.

"Sesshomaru knows I don't say that to flatter him," Kagura continued, eyeing the demon lord with amusement. "A fact is a fact."

"Have you had any trouble since Naraku came and went?" Sesshomaru asked the wind demoness.

"Not at all. In many ways, I am glad that I was not travelling when Naraku called on you – although it meant that I had to be physically closer to him than I might have liked, it also meant that I could keep a sharp eye and all my senses on any unusual changes in these fixed, familiar surroundings." To Inuyasha, she added: "It is hard to know what is different or unusual when one is constantly on the move, as I am. Perhaps I need to learn the art of stillness – but it is not easy to be still when one has so much affinity with the wind. I am always on the move."

"How is it that you are a wind demoness when Naraku – and his other children – are supposed to all be spider demons?" Inuyasha asked with unmasked curiosity.

It was not a question that a rigidly brought-up prince would have asked so bluntly, but Inuyasha had not been strictly bent to the requirements of royal etiquette while growing up, and was more open than another prince would have been. Happily for him, Kagura, although raised a lady by her lord father, had no time for stiff etiquette either. The fact that she sat before them with bare feet, wiggling her lacquered toenails, said it all.

She readily gave him an honest answer: "My former father is himself a strange creature, as you must have discovered by now. He has a fair amount of spider-demon blood in him, but the rest of him is something else. He made me – and the others – out of pieces of his compound body and masses of magic. While I am supposed to be a spider demon, he crafted me to be more of a wind demon, with magic in my fan. As for Kanna, I can't exactly call her a mirror demon because she isn't quite one herself, but she has a great affinity with her magic mirror, so I don't see many spider traits in her either. As for the boys, oh dear, I barely know _what_ they are. The two you met weren't the only males, you know – Naraku gave us two more boys, one of them a parasite of the other, and they were so uncontrollable that they had to be chained up in the basement until he unleashed them on a wolf tribe that miraculously managed to destroy them. Hakudoshi also had a twin, an infant who never grew bigger but still plotted and schemed against our artificial father until Naraku decided enough was enough and reabsorbed him completely! Then there were the monstrous ones, Goshinki and Goryomaru. Goshinki was killed in battle, while Goryomaru teamed up with the infant and was also reabsorbed… you know what? Just take my word for it that the two boys you met really were the most normal of the lot."

Her flippant take on her very strange and messed-up family made Inuyasha smile, despite his jealousy of her, and despite his wonder that she had addressed his brother by his name, without his title. He had only heard himself and his godfathers call Sesshomaru by name, while Naraku had done so once or twice – but then as the ruler of a princedom, Naraku might fancy himself on a level with the demon lord.

Kagura, however, was no ruler, and no family member. To be on such intimate terms with Sesshomaru, they must have had quite a past.

It did not help Inuyasha feel any less jealous when Kagura invited them to have dinner with her, and then to stay the night, and Sesshomaru readily accepted on both counts.

…

They had gone over to Kagura's house a few hours after leaving Minister Atsushi's, so that Inuyasha would have time to look about the town and see all he wanted.

By the time he was contented with his exploration of the town and agreed to go to the wind demoness' place, it was well past teatime. Dinner followed fast on the heels of their light tea with her.

"I have a little present for you, Your Highness," Kagura said with a mischievous smile as they dined together on a simple but beautifully prepared meal of rice, pheasant, eel and winter-melon soup. "I must warn you that you probably will _not_ like the present at all, as I have heard how kind-hearted you are – but it is one that I must insist on giving you."

She rapped her fan on the edge of the table, and one of her servants opened a sliding screen door on the side of the dining hall closest to Kagura's seat.

A very scantily-dressed male figure knelt there, and it crawled on all fours over to Kagura, where it bowed its head to the ground at once and kissed her bare toes.

The brothers realised at once from his scent that it was Mamoru.

"I understand that this creature dared to insult Your Highness and Lord Sesshomaru," Kagura remarked. "So I decided to teach him some manners after he was released from the town prison three days ago."

Inuyasha reddened and said quickly to Kagura: "It's really not necessary – I think he's been punished enough already."

Mamoru kept his head bowed, so Sesshomaru and Inuyasha could only see his brown hair and his neck, but not his face.

"You think that I'm being unnecessarily cruel," Kagura said. "But I can promise you that I am being kind beyond words. I don't suppose anyone reported to Your Highness that this insolent creature behaved himself so very, very badly while he was in prison, despite admonishments from his father, his sister and all his brothers, that the warden was obliged under the law to extend his sentence and order him to be harshly flogged?"

"What did he do?" Inuyasha asked, staring in amazement at the unrepentant, still-bowing Mamoru.

"He bit and clawed his guards and threatened them with reprisal, and tried to break out of his cell three times. And he did not stop insulting Your Highness, even though all his siblings visited him and told him how merciful you had been by asking – or was it compelling? – your royal brother to cease punishing him. Oh, the rumours I heard about how fiercely you opposed your brother!"

Inuyasha could feel Sesshomaru's growing fury, and he began to panic as he feared that his brother would cut Mamoru down with his claws on the spot. But Kagura miraculously made it all go away by bringing them up to date with the situation.

She said: "I know something of prisons and cells, having been locked in one for long stretches of time by my father years ago. And I know that no one who is bloody-minded enough ever repents while incarcerated. I also had the greatest respect for what I had heard of Your Highness' compassion, and I knew you would not want him to be flogged to within an inch of his life despite his disrespect. So I decided to take matters into my own hands. I called for a meeting with the town mayor and with the prison warden, and asked them to release him into my custody."

Inuyasha glanced at Mamoru and observed that he seemed unharmed.

"Show me your face," Kagura sternly ordered the dog demon who knelt at her feet.

Mamoru raised his head and looked at his mistress, and Inuyasha was struck at once by the look of adoration mingled with fear and respect in the once-rebellious demon's eyes.

"What do you have to say to your prince and your king?" Kagura asked, the naughty sparkle in her eyes replaced now by a steely glint. Her dangling jade earrings had stopped dancing as her lively movements turned to intimidating stillness.

To Inuyasha's amazement, the former castle servant who had so mocked him now crawled over to his feet under the table and kissed the tips of his boots repeatedly, then lifted his face hesitantly and said: "Your Highness, please forgive your humble servant for his past misdeeds. I have learnt the error of my ways."

He bent and kissed Inuyasha's boots again, leaving the prince so taken aback that he did not know what to do.

"And your king?" Kagura prompted sternly, reaching under the table with her fan to smack Mamoru on the rump. It made his skimpy tunic fly up, exposing his bare bottom. But he did not dare reach back to cover himself before scurrying along the floor to crouch before Sesshomaru and knock his forehead on the floorboards. He knew better than to try and touch any part of the demon lord.

"My lord, please forgive me for my insolence and my unacceptable behaviour. I acknowledge my misdeeds and my initial failure to learn from them, but I am learning my lessons thoroughly now."

Sesshomaru looked over at Kagura and lifted one eyebrow minutely while Kagura smirked and tapped her fan against her palm.

Sesshomaru considered the grovelling creature before him for some time, noted how he trembled and still dared not cover himself, and glanced again at the formidable mistress he had acquired, before saying: "Be grateful that I have not cut you down before this. Get away from my feet."

"Yes, my lord, thank you, my lord," Mamoru gushed, banging his head on the floorboards again before crawling back to Kagura's side.

"My legs are stiff and aching after being cooped up in this house for days," Kagura complained dramatically to no one in particular, but it was all she needed to say for an eager Mamoru to beg for permission to make her feel better.

For answer, she thrust one very shapely leg out at him while she continued to eat her dinner, and he gratefully kissed it and began to massage it with great care and dedication, up and down the smooth, elegant length of that beautiful limb. It was obvious that he was completely infatuated with her.

The look Sesshomaru gave Kagura over the table very plainly said: _You managed to achieve such submissiveness and obedience in such a recalcitrant idiot after only three days?_

And the look Kagura returned him very plainly said: _You of all people should know what I am capable of._

The intimacy of that wordless exchange left Inuyasha feeling more threatened by Kagura's charming character than he had been at the start of the visit.

Even then, he could not help liking her – a fact which irrationally made him even more jealous of her than before.


	34. Protective Devices

Sesshomaru and Inuyasha were given separate, adjacent rooms for the night. Half their own guards stood in the corridor, and the other half joined Kagura's security staff outside the house.

"The mushrooms will keep, you know," Sesshomaru said, when he stepped into Inuyasha's room and saw his brother worrying unhappily at the knot which secured the parcel of edible fungi.

"Oh, I know," Inuyasha replied uninterestedly.

"What's wrong?" Sesshomaru asked, entering the room and putting his arms round the boy.

Inuyasha at once felt ungrateful for sulking over what was probably nothing, when Sesshomaru had gone out of his way to take him on this outing, which had for the most part been very enjoyable.

"Nothing's wrong," he lied. "Maybe it's just that I'm not used to this house, and Kagura looks so much like Naraku."

"She does. But as I said before, a person's character will colour every way in which you perceive him or her. Kagura is a good demon. She is very mischievous, is unquestionably vicious when you raise her ire, and can be sharp with people, but she is honourable and good at heart in a way that her father could never be."

"I know. I can tell."

"So rest easy under her roof. Her house has the highest security in this town, thanks to her living under the constant threat of being assassinated by her own family. This place may even be better guarded than Minister Atsushi's house, but don't tell him that."

Inuyasha smiled and received a kiss from Sesshomaru.

"Go to bed now," the demon lord said to his brother. "I will sit up with Kagura for a while – you won't want to be bored by all the old topics we will be discussing."

The demon lord left the room then, closing the door behind him.

Inuyasha could not sleep. It felt like the night he had tossed and turned in Sesshomaru's bed while waiting for him to come upstairs from the event hall. This was the same night all over again, with a female Naraku ready to seduce his brother this time – that is, if the seduction had not already taken place long ago, going by the way they seemed to know and trust each other implicitly.

The similarity between the two occasions grew even stronger and made Inuyasha feel even worse when he lay down for a sleepless hour before getting up and wandering restlessly around his room, and finally out to the small balcony onto which his bedroom opened. It was carefully walled on its sides and double-screened as the rest of the house was, but once he moved past the inner blinds, he had a surprisingly good view of the exterior through the slats of the outer blinds.

The balcony overlooked a small but very elegant back garden with high walls that were well guarded. Security was clearly not an issue here – but that was the last thing on Inuyasha's mind when he looked down into the garden and saw his brother and Kagura strolling through it in the night like a pair of old lovers.

Sesshomaru had said before that he had considered Naraku's physical form attractive until the spider demon's character coloured his view of him. So that meant he surely found Kagura _very_ attractive – a female version of the spider lord, without any of his disgusting personality traits.

"If Kanna's mirror left a shard or two behind," Kagura was saying. "You would be able to sniff them out – they have the same aura and scent as Naraku himself."

"We have detected nothing despite combing the entire castle – no scent and no aura," Sesshomaru said.

"Then perhaps the shards have flown off – they can shrink and grow and move of their own accord, you know, or under remote orders from Kanna – which would ultimately be Naraku's orders, of course. They can even grow into an entire mirror demon – but you wouldn't miss that!"

"We shall continue to be on alert, and so must you. The shards may be on their way over here."

"I know better than most how to deal with my sister's tricks. To be fair to her, she never does anything of this sort without being ordered to by our father. We'll all keep a sharp lookout for anything out of the ordinary. Now, about your brother – you should have told me how cute he was," Kagura said playfully to Sesshomaru. She was still barefooted, the way Inuyasha himself preferred to be, except that he now had to dress properly as the prince of the castle.

"Why? So that you could make plans to seduce him?" Sesshomaru asked.

"Well, if he would have me…" Kagura began cheekily, before rapping the broad lacquered side of her fan against Sesshomaru's chest. "Oh, don't look at me like that! I know better than to try – I can see how _you_ look at _him_."

"Can you, now? I did not realise that I had become so transparent. I must work on hiding my feelings better."

"Why would you want to do that? _I_ would show off such a beautiful partner."

"For _his_ safety, Kagura," Sesshomaru replied. "It is not always good to tell the world how much you treasure someone, if it only invites your enemies to work harder to take that someone away from you."

Although their exchange was emphasising how much Sesshomaru cared for him, it stung Inuyasha that his brother had spoken Kagura's name so gently – he suddenly realised how Sesshomaru almost never used anyone's name when conversing with them. It was as if most people were beneath acknowledgement, except when he was addressing them in a hostile manner as he did Naraku, or when he was fond of the person and considered him his equal, as Inuyasha believed he did with regard to himself.

So Kagura was worthy of such intimacy?

"What is your brother's official status in relation to you, Sesshomaru?" Kagura asked in her naturally sultry voice. "Would it be… breaking some kind of etiquette if I were to suggest picking up where we last left off?"

She rested an elegant, petite hand on Sesshomaru's arm and looked up at him out of her thickly lashed, ruby-hued eyes.

Sesshomaru seemed to consider her offer for more seconds than Inuyasha thought necessary, before saying: "Thank you for your very kind and inviting suggestion – it is not unwelcome to me, but I must turn it down. I know you won't hold it against me, as I am very certain that you have numerous playmates who would amuse you better than I would."

"I won't hold it against you, as you know very well," Kagura said graciously, and far more good-humouredly than Inuyasha himself would have done had he been in her place. "But none of my 'playmates' are quite like you, Sesshomaru."

"I will accept that as a compliment."

"I suppose this new restraint of yours has a lot to do with the way you couldn't keep your eyes off him."

"We are finding our way with each other; I would not damage that for all the world."

"Oh well, another time, perhaps."

"Perhaps."

That "perhaps" infuriated Inuyasha. What was Sesshomaru saying? That he would sleep with Kagura on some other occasion? Maybe when he had grown tired of Inuyasha and was ready to resume his "recreational" activities with all his other lovers? Or at the first possible opportunity when Inuyasha wasn't under the same roof as them? Or…

Inuyasha suddenly pulled his raging, runaway thoughts up short when he realised that he had no substantial, iron-clad basis for feeling this way. After all, he was Sesshomaru's brother and the prince of this land – but beyond that? What was he to his brother besides a brother? What official status did he have as Sesshomaru's partner? None. He was not a mate or a consort, not even the equivalent of a high-born concubine from another royal house.

He had had a cryptic verbal exchange with his brother over lunch in which they seemed to have chosen each other as partners, and they had later declared each other a chosen companion in private. He knew that Sesshomaru now regarded him as his mate; but that was not the same as telling the world that one had taken a mate.

He was a prince, and the demon lord's brother, but as far as his partnership with Sesshomaru was concerned, he was officially nobody. Kagura had certainly not overstepped any boundaries, for there were apparently none.

He stood there for a while more as Sesshomaru and Kagura went on to discuss other matters, mostly concerning what Inuyasha had overheard Kanna's mirror saying in the forest patch, and when she would set off on more of her travels again for business and pleasure. The conversation ended with Kagura declaring that it was high time she got some rest and untied the miserable Mamoru, whom she casually described as "still strung up by his balls in my bedroom."

"What, may I ask, did you do to make that idiot more of an idiot than before?" Sesshomaru asked curiously.

"You did _not_ just ask for my trade secrets!" Kagura affected shock and horror.

"I only wanted to know if you used magic on him."

"Magic? Of course not, Sesshomaru. You know me better than that. What fun is there in using magic spells on someone when it means that their responses to you are not genuine?"

"Then what have you done to him?"

"You are still asking for my trade secrets!" she said, smiling. "Surely you don't want me to go out of business!"

"You have many trades other than that of taming demons – one open secret won't ruin you."

"I can give you _one_ hint: generous doses of feminine charm laced with strong evidence of a bitchy temper, a lot of psychological harshness layered with a little kindness, and plenty of minor physical punishment paired with a small amount of affection can take you very, very far."

Then they went indoors and disappeared from Inuyasha's view.

The half-demon returned to his room and closed the doors to the balcony behind him. He lay down in his bed, expecting that Sesshomaru would come in to check on him, just as he had the other night, and possibly stay with him. That would make up for a lot of what he had heard this evening.

But his brother did not come into his room. With wounded feelings, he listened as the door of the room next door opened and closed, and that was it. After some time he shut his eyes and slept. Before he knew it, it was morning, and Sesshomaru had not been with him at all. The injury was quite complete.

They did not stay for breakfast, although Kagura invited them to. Inuyasha now wondered why they had even needed to stay the night, considering that the castle gates were merely two miles from the edge of the town.

After thanking their hostess for her hospitality, and catching one more inadvertent glimpse of the unfortunate yet infatuated Mamoru scurrying around naked, trying his best to scrub the floor of a small room on his hands and knees with his wrists bound to his ankles, they left Kagura's house and set off for the castle.

…

Sesshomaru knew better than to try to talk to Inuyasha on their two-mile walk to the castle. The vibes emanating from the half-demon's spirit, and the look on his face, suggested that he would explode spectacularly in front of all the guards and every person they passed if Sesshomaru said one wrong word.

The demon lord also knew better than to suggest that he and Inuyasha should fly back to the castle while the guards took the road, because his brother did not look at all as if he would be amenable to being clasped in his arms and carried through the air in front of everyone.

So when they reached their home and finally stepped through the front door of the castle building, Sesshomaru watched with increasing concern as Inuyasha put on a cheerful face while distributing his presents to Kazuki, Natsumi, Jaken and to Satoshi to give out to the children, then waited till he was back inside the royal wing to stomp down the corridor to his own room and shut the door firmly after him.

Sesshomaru could not believe that he actually felt some trepidation and needed to draw a deep breath before knocking on the door and entering Inuyasha's room. How much had he allowed this one boy to affect and change him? Was it good for either of them?

"All right – what is wrong now?"

"You say that as if I give you trouble all the time."

"You can hardly deny that my life has been turned upside down since I brought you home."

"So why don't you just get rid of me?" Inuyasha snapped.

"Why would I want to do that?"

"So that you can go back to your precious Kagura, and 'perhaps' take her up on her very generous offer to pick up where you last left off!" Inuyasha snarled. "You didn't even come into my room _once_ after you left her!"

"It seems that you hear many things which are not intended for your ears," Sesshomaru remarked quietly.

"Bloody good job I heard _that_ , or I might have deluded myself into believing that you would only want me. But of course you don't. You're a king. Kings have their mates and their concubines and consorts and pleasure slaves and the gods only know how many mistresses outside their castles, and I'd be an idiot to imagine that things would be any different with you just because you've been nice to me."

Sesshomaru, starting to grow exasperated, threw him a response: "Do I not show you how much I care for you? Have I not just spent an entire day and night indulging your desire to see new places? Would I do that for anyone else in the whole world? Inuyasha, I did not go into your room last night because you had just told me not so many hours before that that you needed your space and your privacy! Why are you upset about this? Have I not honoured you above all others in every way?"

"Oh, so it's 'honouring' me now and there will be a bunch of others after this, will there?" Inuyasha shot back.

Sesshomaru took a moment to consider the matter. He had fully intended to remain faithful to Inuyasha from the second he decided that he truly cared for him, and he was now in the process of making preparations to take him as a first mate. But demons have very long lives, and this demon lord could not honestly assure himself or his brother that he would never take another companion for as long as he lived. He had decided that he would no longer use his bath and chamber servants for pleasure, and he planned to hold himself to that. However, other companions of a rank appropriate to him – such as Kagura and Tsubasa – were a different matter. How could he make a promise to have no other when he was a king with an entire kingdom at his disposal, and faced with numerous temptations from countless inviting or politically attractive sources?

More importantly, their inu-demon clan believed strongly in having children born through natural means, not by magic. So Inuyasha would never bear him any heirs. At some point, he would have to take a female mate who could secure his line with strong children. He might not love such a mate, but she would probably be a necessary element in his future. Surely the boy realised that?

Inuyasha would always be his dearest one, his first choice, his first mate, the companion of his heart. But the _only_ one?

The boy had to know that would be highly unlikely.

While he was thinking all those thoughts, Inuyasha was wrapping up the amulets he had bought for the village children and putting them away in a cabinet where they would be safe and undisturbed until he was ready to either take them with him on his next visit to the village, or send them off along with a freshly written letter to Kikyo and Kaede – for the letter he had begun on previously and not finished had disappeared – he guessed that it had probably been destroyed or blown away by the wind during Naraku's assault on Natsumi.

"Inuyasha," Sesshomaru said, not entirely sure of what words he would follow that one, precious name with.

"What?" Inuyasha snapped, straightening up after finding an empty space in the low, lacquered cabinet to put his amulet packages in.

"I have taken Kagura to bed a number of times over the years. She is a loyal ally and makes entertaining company – when she can be trusted to remain in one place for more than a day. But if you heard us last night, I turned her down this time. I told her 'perhaps' purely out of politeness, and not because I meant to follow through. I would never insult you by taking another companion into my bed without your consent. I would never pressure you for such consent either. I have promised you that I would do my best not to use our servants and visitors indiscriminately for my pleasure, and I intend to keep that promise. But at some point in our future, I shall require a female mate to bear me children. Do you understand that?"

Inuyasha was very quiet for a while, fingering an invisible spot on the glossy surface of the cabinet top. He was thinking of how peculiar almost all of Naraku's magical children had turned out to be, and how he assuredly did not want Sesshomaru or himself to have to create any weird offspring through magic. He also thought of how he and Sesshomaru would not be here at all if his father had not taken one demon female as his first mate, and one human female as his next. The late demon lord would have had no descendants without those two females. History – and his family – did not relate whether his father had ever had any male lovers.

"I suppose I do," he murmured softly, realising that it would be selfish of him to expect Sesshomaru never to mate with a female and have offspring of his own. Except that somewhere at the back of his mind he had hoped that there would be some other way…

Sesshomaru stepped over to the cabinet, right up behind Inuyasha, and took him into his arms. "Would it help if I were to tell you that I have no intention whatsoever of taking any such female for at least a thousand years more? And by that time, you will probably be –"

"Dead," Inuyasha interjected flatly.

Sesshomaru sighed heavily and continued: "I was going to say that by that time, you would probably be so weary of me that you would be off somewhere ruling your favourite province and sleeping with a troupe of female concubines and telling me to 'fuck off forever' or whatever it is you like to say when you're furious with me."

"I'll still probably be dead. Half-demons don't live as long as full demons."

"They do when they are sired by great demons as mighty as our father was. You will live a long and happy life, my little brother, and you will be as powerful as you choose to be. I won't allow it to be otherwise."

"You can't have everything your way, you know," Inuyasha said quietly.

"I know. But I will move heaven and earth to have my way and will not back down until heaven, earth and hell convince me that I cannot."

"And even then you'd tear heaven, earth and hell asunder and try again."

"I would."

Inuyasha mulled over his words for some time before murmuring: "I suppose we can revisit this issue in a thousand years." The first note of lightness was stealing back into his voice after an entire morning of gloom.

"Even after a thousand years, you will still be my first and foremost chosen companion, my primary mate, and I will still be yours – I have no plans to permit that to change, ever. No one will take your place."

"If you insist… control freak," he answered, giving his first genuine grin of the day.

A sharp smack to his backside informed him he had just crossed the control freak's line.

…

"You didn't!" Inuyasha gasped.

"I did," Sesshomaru replied.

The prince was staring at the toy set he had been so fascinated by in town. Sesshomaru had sent someone out to buy it and have it delivered to the castle by the early afternoon.

"I told you I wouldn't know what to do with it!" Inuyasha said, but his eyes were shining and he was already starting to play with some of the wheeled carts, sending them speeding and spinning around the track.

"How about… just playing with it until you are so utterly bored with it that you decide to toss the entire thing out of the window when you are next angry with me?"

"Ha."

He was delighted with the toys, however, and had to be pried away from them when Sesshomaru decided that it was time to meet Totosai in the field and do some training with their swords.

Feeling very satisfied with himself and with his thoughtfulness, Sesshomaru thoroughly enjoyed the training, which went on for hours until Inuyasha could hardly lift his arm to swing his Tetsusaiga. He looked much more cheerful now, and did not seem to be sulking any more over possibly having to share him with some unknown female a very, very long way into the future.

But the demon lord's smugness was completely shattered when they stepped into the grand hallway after their training, and the chief administrator hurried up to them to report that a messenger had just delivered a gift from Lord Naraku to Prince Inuyasha.

Sesshomaru immediately feared a trap or poison, picturing rabid centipedes with poisonous fangs shooting out of the elaborate box. He ordered that his security staff trained in magical defence should examine the item at once. They were in fact already doing so with great care, and it was soon pronounced safe by all of them.

So the beautifully embroidered box with Inuyasha's name inscribed on an elegant wood-and-gold inset was placed on a table in the hallway. After Sesshomaru and Totosai themselves had inspected the box and found nothing untoward about it, Inuyasha was allowed to approach his gift and raise the lid, the inside of which bore an inscription: _We were destined for each other._ But it was what rested in the silk lining the base of the box that made everyone gasp.

"Oh my!" Totosai exclaimed in a gravelly burst of interest. "That's very fine – _very_ fine indeed."

For Totosai, the great craftsman and artist, to say that something was fine, it had to be impressive.

It certainly was, as Sesshomaru was obliged to acknowledge, when Inuyasha lifted from the box a stunningly beautiful golden necklace of multiple lace-like strands with an elaborately worked, sapphire-accented amulet pendant shaped like a treasure cask suspended from them. It was the kind of filigree jewellery that only the cleverest spider fingers could create. The lacy strands were elegant, yet entirely suitable for a powerful male to wear, for when overlaid against one another, they gave the appearance of fine chain mail, and were very strong.

"The amulet seems to be genuinely protective, my lord," explained the security captain whose speciality was magical weapons and defence. "There is no trap in it that any of us can discern. It appears in fact to be a beneficial gift to His Highness."

"It is the kind of gift that royal spider demons give to those they want to woo, though I've never seen one as fine as this," Totosai observed. "I remember, because there was this spider-demon duchess I knew from long before Onigumo's time… oh, but I suppose that's another thing you wouldn't be interested in."

"Well, I don't want it," Inuyasha said abruptly, putting the amulet and necklace back in the box. "Please return it to Naraku."

But it was an exceedingly fine item, and Sesshomaru himself could hardly help admiring its breathtaking construction and proportions, neither could he help noticing that Inuyasha was, albeit reluctantly, impressed by its splendour and by the grandness of such a valuable gift.

"It isn't polite to return such items," Totosai murmured. "They're not like engagement gifts which should be sent back if one party changes his or her mind – these are gifts meant to be kept, whether one accepts the suitor or not. Items like the one before you are intended purely as a message of the suitor's sincerity."

"Whatever," Inuyasha muttered, his cheeks turning slightly pink – which made him look even more beautiful than usual – when he suddenly realised that Naraku had just made a very public declaration of not giving up on the hope of having him as a consort. "I still don't want it."

"Then it will be kept in the treasury, out of your sight," Sesshomaru told him quickly, gesturing to the chief administrator to shut the box and remove it from the hallway. The demon lord knew something of such spider customs, and grudgingly had to agree that such a gift was not supposed to be sent back to its giver, regardless of the recipient's answer.

And suddenly Sesshomaru was not satisfied – not satisfied at all – with the platitudes and shallow assurances and childish toys he had given Inuyasha earlier. He should instead have given him wholehearted promises, declarations of undying devotion and a thousand gold rings.

Because he wanted so much more for him, and to be so much more to him.

In the blink of an eye, most unexpectedly, one thousand years of faithfulness now looked miserably inadequate.


	35. By Surprise

"What's this?" Inuyasha asked, arching an eyebrow, as Sesshomaru took his hand under the cover of a fine velvet cloth, and slipped something onto his middle finger.

When the demon lord moved his hands away, a perfect band of solid gold, broad and gleaming, engraved with intriguing swirls like those Totosai had painted above Sesshomaru's bed, graced his third digit. A ring fit for a prince – no, for a king. Sesshomaru then clasped what proved to be an elegantly worked gold cuff over his left wrist. A length of fine gold chain linked the ring and the cuff.

"All right, what's this for?" Inuyasha questioned.

"Don't you like it?" Sesshomaru asked, with some consternation, for he had put much thought into the design and had hurried his best craftsmen, which their royal family had worked with for hundreds of years, to complete it.

"It's beautiful. But what's it for?"

"Does it have to be _for_ anything?" inquired the elder brother.

"As it's the latest in a week-long list of fabulously expensive gifts from you for no particular reason, I really _have_ to wonder," Inuyasha remarked, glancing across at the chests, cabinets and shelves in which, or on which, the items in question were stored or displayed.

One week had passed since Naraku's amulet-shaped expression of determined courtship had arrived at the castle. Immediately upon going to his room that day, Inuyasha had written to Naraku in his own hand to thank the spider lord politely for the amulet, and to request that he stop sending presents, saying that it was wrong to receive such generous gifts when no favourable answer could be returned.

Sesshomaru had sealed the letter and sent it off promptly with his most intimidating boar-demon messenger. Totosai had decided to go off with the messenger, saying that he would return when he next felt like dropping in.

Over the course of that week, Sesshomaru had surprised Inuyasha with gifts of bejewelled daggers, dress boots of such exquisite quality that Inuyasha did not dare put his feet into them, an exorbitantly fine set of silver tools for buffing and sharpening his claws, a customised leather-and-wool saddlecloth that he could use whenever he flew on any of the dragons to visit the village, sashes shot through with so much gold thread that the prince was afraid to fold them, and now this fabulous ring and cuff worked to such perfection that they looked to be worth ten times more than all the other gifts put together.

The demon lord had humoured his every whim, going so far as to assent immediately and summon his soldiers when Inuyasha tested him by saying that he wanted Mamoru's balls served up to him on a silver platter. The prince had to quickly convince his brother that he was only joking, and that he wanted no balls of any description, from anyone, animal, human or demon, before the pathetic former servant of the castle wound up castrated – although Inuyasha was certain that Kagura was already doing a very good job of that on a psychological level.

"Consider these presents demonstrations of my regard for you, or courtship gifts, or simply things that I want you to have because you deserve only the best," Sesshomaru said, caressing his face and hair.

"Everything you've given me is perfect," Inuyasha responded. "But I don't need _things_ from you. You don't have to buy me, you know. I actually already like you, for some strange reason. There's nothing you need to prove."

"I know. But it makes me happy to indulge you a little more than usual, at this time."

By "this time", Inuyasha knew that Sesshomaru was referring to the period leading up to the public announcement that they were to be mates. The whole castle knew, probably because Sesshomaru had given orders for various preparations to be made. His pleasure at knowing that he would soon rank officially as Sesshomaru's mate was somewhat tempered by his memory of their conversation about his brother's need for heirs, and also by the fact that Sesshomaru had never once asked him formally if he wished to be his mate.

"Is this," Inuyasha began, indicating the ring and cuff whose skilfully engraved grooves and wavy lines shimmered like the stylised fur of a golden animal, "supposed to be some kind of mysterious engagement jewellery whose significance I don't get, thanks to my dog-demon ignorance as a result of being raised by humans?"

Sesshomaru kissed him, but did not give him an answer.

He must have guessed right, because when he turned up for a meeting that Sesshomaru had asked him to attend, Chieftain Mitsuharu and all the other ministers he had never met greeted him with the appropriate deference, then bowed again once they spotted the ring and cuff and offered him their congratulations.

 _You could have warned me,_ the look he shot Sesshomaru said.

 _Didn't you guess correctly? You should have been prepared,_ was the message conveyed by the look Sesshomaru shot back at him.

The meeting began with Minister Mitsuharu giving a full account of the work to prevent future flooding in the south, reporting that the southern governors had discovered that a lack of proper planning in tree- and forest-clearing had precipitated the disaster. Trees and grass were being replanted, and weak spots along the river banks would be artificially reinforced until the roots grew strong. One hundred and twelve humans had died in the flood and mudslide, but many more had been saved by the prompt arrival of Lord Sesshomaru's soldiers, and the practical help they had given. Generous donations and practical help from other provinces meant that the southern provinces were now well set-up for full recovery.

Minister Ryota then reported that his spies had heard news of increased border troubles between the demon birds and Naraku's bandits. "Lord Naraku appears to be directing more unwanted attention to his other neighbours now that he knows we have not been fooled by the behaviour of his unacknowledged army of harassers."

"Our own borders have seen no trouble at all from the spider bandits since Lord Naraku's visit," Minister Atsushi confirmed. "It is Queen Abi's border defences that are now being tested even harder than before. I have heard talk that Queen Abi is reinforcing her northern coastline and naval defences; she may soon request that you do the same to give Naraku less room for manoeuvre."

Sesshomaru's lands were not far from the demon birds' territory. They shared a border near the southwest of his kingdom, while in the east, they were separated by only a relatively narrow strip of Naraku's land. The eastern coastlines of all three territories were in a row – Sesshomaru's seaboard ran in a broad strip from the northern bear lands downwards; Naraku had much narrower access to the waters directly south of that; and the demon birds' coastline was the mountainous landscape on the southern half of the continent. Sesshomaru defended his eastern coast well, given that a sneaky assault by sea was always possible.

Many human kingdoms and the massive kingdom of the dragons lay across that sea, but the human rulers were mostly inward-looking, lacking the confidence to take on demon-ruled lands. And Ryuukotsusei's daughter was a peaceable creature quite different from her hawkish father. Sesshomaru was not as concerned about his powerful reptilian friends as he was about surprise visits by spider armies rowing their way up north over the waves to harass the people of his eastern provinces.

"Prepare to step up our naval defences, so that we can respond with suitable speed if Queen Abi contacts us," Sesshomaru made his decision. "Even without a request from Abi, our eastern waters and coast must be completely closed to Naraku. He must be watched from north and south of his coastline, and must not be allowed to use our waters or beaches for launching assaults on his other neighbours, or for his forces to retreat to. Restrict fishing activity by the coastal communities for this time until further notice – give them additional finances and leeway to fish further up north, or to purchase seafood from unaffected communities if necessary."

The Finance Minister made a note of the directive.

"How long will this order be in effect?" Inuyasha asked, drawing surprised looks from the ministers present, other than Atsushi and Ryota. Those who had never met him and were now seeing him for the first time as Lord Sesshomaru's intended mate had not expected him to speak at all, thinking him too young to have an opinion, quite forgetting whose son he was.

"As long as it has to be," Sesshomaru replied, wondering what his brother was going to say next.

"Without giving the fishing communities a time frame for the changes that will affect them, they will suffer unnecessary hardship," Inuyasha said. "The village I lived in is not that far from the sea. I've seen those communities. Whether human or demon, their lives are hard enough as it is, without the added uncertainty of encroaching on others' fishing territories, and being unable to make a living the way they best know how."

"We can't give them a time frame, Inuyasha," Sesshomaru said. "We do not know how long hostilities will drag on between the demon birds and Naraku's bandit troops."

"How about a different approach, then? _If_ you don't mind a suggestion from me, that is," Inuyasha proposed, wondering if Sesshomaru was going to take him to task for contradicting him in public again, and whether he would have an opportunity this time to pinch his brother's tongue between his claws before he got spanked hard.

"I welcome any suggestions that promise to work well," the demon lord replied.

"My opinion is that if you're going to pay money to these communities to move north or purchase food from others, you might as well pay them to take naval personnel onto their fishing craft or to dive with them, and help to act as lookouts while they fish. The human fishermen fish only in the daytime, and the demon fisherfolk go out at night. They always row out in groups. You've got the entire day and night covered there. These communities are tight-knit – they look out for one another on or in the water. Nothing will happen to one boat or diver without others noticing very soon, and if you have naval personnel on the boats, or diving alongside the divers, the alarm can be raised and the coastal forces alerted in seconds should Naraku's forces attempt any military sea activity. At the same time, you will ensure that none of the fisher individuals has been bought by enemy forces to close an eye to foreign activity. Many of the demon fisherfolk are aquatic or amphibious – you wouldn't know what they were up to under the water with Naraku's marine-scorpion relatives unless your aquatic officers were with them – we do have sea-snake and shark officers in our navy, don't we? If need be, our officers could be disguised as fisher-folk too – Naraku's forces wouldn't know if they did it discreetly enough."

Scattered whispers and conversation broke out all over the meeting hall as the ministers started to ask one another questions about Inuyasha, and his suggestions. Minister Atsushi kept his own counsel and considered the plan carefully for some time before calling everyone's attention back to the matter by saying: "My lord, His Highness' suggestions might be workable, at a lower cost than our original plan, as it will mean deploying fewer military vessels. As he has observed these communities at firsthand, and if their daily activities are as he has described, we should be able to apply his plan, with minor adaptations to the requirements of our naval personnel."

"Excellent," Sesshomaru said. "Look into how we can carry it out most effectively."

Inuyasha was worried that Sesshomaru would be annoyed with him for butting in when, for all he knew, his brother only expected him to sit pretty in such meetings. But Sesshomaru did not look annoyed; in fact, he looked rather pleased.

…

"Has Lord Sesshomaru told you when he will make the public announcement that you will be his mate?" Natsumi asked Inuyasha when he was taking his bath that evening.

Inuyasha looked at the ring and cuff, which he had taken off for the bath, but which he would put on again before dinner. "No, he hasn't said anything. Maybe he'll call off the whole thing after my behaviour at the meeting today."

It was Natsumi's turn to glance at the ring and cuff. "After giving you an engagement gift of such value? And making certain that you wore it in front of all the ministers? I don't think so, Your Highness. I believe Lord Sesshomaru simply needs to inform his mother about his plans before he makes an announcement."

"She won't approve," Inuyasha murmured pessimistically. "I'll bet she's hated me from the day I was born, no matter what Sesshomaru says."

"It won't matter to Lord Sesshomaru personally whether his mother approves or not," Natsumi said. "He doesn't need her blessing to proceed, not when he's a ruler in his own right. But the custom is that his mother must be informed about his choice of mate, and to see you for herself before the mating ceremony."

"Well, you know what? She'll be interested only in the sort of mate who can give her son children. I won't be anyone of significance in her eyes."

"I can't speak for Lord Sesshomaru's mother, but I did meet her once during her last visit, and she seems fair. She was very beautiful, very intimidating and very demanding, but she did not strike me as unreasonable. Although such things are really not for me to say."

"I guess I'll find out soon enough," Inuyasha sighed.

Natsumi did her best to neutralise his gloom, not wanting him to go downstairs for dinner with a long face. She treated him exactly the same as she always had, but Inuyasha noticed that the other staff were now treating him in a slightly different manner. It was not a question of the quality of their service, which had been impeccable since the Mamoru incident. It was a difference in the… he supposed it he had to call it a difference in the style of their service, and he guessed that he knew why.

A prince or princess other than the firstborn and heir would be expected to leave home at some point after coming of age. That step might be prompted by a mating to a political or family ally, or someone he or she had been betrothed to since birth, or by an appointment given to him or her to govern a province or annexed land.

Well-trained staff would always treat younger members of a royal family perfectly, albeit with an air of expectation that eventually they would leave the main seat of power to lead lives of their own. But a mate of the ruling lord or lady was someone who would always be here as long as his or her mate remained on the throne – at least in principle, for there was always the possibility of a spectacular falling-out such as that which had taken place between the late demon lord and Sesshomaru's mother.

That rare example of the termination of a mated pairing had been facilitated by Sesshomaru's mother being the ruler of her own kingdom, with no hesitation about packing up and heading home. After all, who was there to rank above her and tell her that she could not go home just because she was someone's mate? A younger princess would have been chided by her parents and sent back to their son-in-law. But Sesshomaru's mother was no one's younger sibling; no one ever told her what to do.

The older servants who had witnessed the arguments leading to the eventual separation of Sesshomaru's parents knew that Inuyasha's hot temper and Sesshomaru's obstinacy could mean a similar rupture in the future. But they also calculated that Inuyasha would be less likely to move out permanently even if a fight erupted, because he had no kingdom of his own to run away to, unless a small village counted as a kingdom. With his long half-demon life, that entire village might well be unrecognisable by the time he fell out with Sesshomaru, so he would have no other home to go to.

They thus treated him as if they fully expected him to be here for good.

Which Inuyasha thought was nice, in a way, and unnerving in so many other ways.

…

For the first time in his life, he dressed with Sesshomaru in mind. He liked Natsumi's choice of a black and deep-iridescent-green evening robe, but he had her remove one inner layer and adjust the fabric under the sash so the robe fitted him more closely and exposed a shade more skin at his throat.

As he had hoped, Sesshomaru could not take his eyes off him as he walked into the dining hall, his gold ring and cuff gleaming against the deep colours of his clothes, nor could he stop admiring him as they ate their meal.

The demon lord could not wait to get Inuyasha upstairs after dinner. There, he put their three swords aside on the table, and proceeded to undress him lovingly, as if to say that while the packaging was excellent, what was underneath the wrapping was even better. He caressed him until they were both on the verge of plunging into another fast and furious coupling, but then he denied himself and Inuyasha with impressive discipline, by holding back long enough to bind Inuyasha's wrists to his elaborately carved bedhead with a long silk sash.

"I promised that I would take you one of these days when you were all trussed up, and the time has come," Sesshomaru whispered to him, giving him a frisson of anticipation.

"And the point of it would be…?" Inuyasha asked, trying to sound as if he could care less when in fact he was doing all he could not to tremble helplessly as Sesshomaru ran his fingertips down his body to his ankles, which he also secured, one to each corner of the foot of the bed, by even longer sashes.

"The point, my Inuyasha, is that I want you to feel nothing but pleasure this evening, and to know that I expect nothing from you – no return in kind, no thoughts of doing to me what I am doing to you, no distraction other than to accept my attention."

Inuyasha did begin to shiver now, all the more when Sesshomaru bound a luxuriously soft sash around his eyes to blindfold him.

"I don't even want you distracted by what you see. On another occasion, I would be pleased to put rolled-up strips of cloth in your ears to muffle your hearing and scent-neutralising essences on the burner. But the blindfold will be enough for now. Listen to my voice – these sashes would be easy for you to snap and tear, but it is my command that they remain intact, until I untie them myself, do you understand?"

Inuyasha nodded uncertainly, unable to see Sesshomaru.

The feather-light strokes began, followed by the gentlest kisses which sometimes tapered off into nothing, leaving Inuyasha wondering if Sesshomaru was simply sitting back for a minute or two for the pure purpose of gazing at him without touching. His cheeks flushed as he discovered how erotic and unnerving it was not to be able to see what his lover was doing – what he was looking at, what he might be contemplating, what his next move would be.

At times the touches deepened into passionate kneading or turned into ardent kisses – Inuyasha never knew what was coming from one moment to the next, except that every touch was calculated to please him. Sesshomaru's hands, Sesshomaru's lips, Sesshomaru's hair… he could barely tell after a while which part of his mate-to-be was in contact with him. Skin sliding against skin, claws and teeth grazing and nibbling, a curtain of hair trailing over his body, the very tips of that hair sending electrifying signals through his flesh… and were those Sesshomaru's knuckles teasing his asshole, or perhaps a piece of jade, or even some other object picked up from the side table… he couldn't tell, and frankly, he wasn't trying to play "name the object", not when he was in heaven with everything that was happening.

Water… no, saliva… no, unscented oil on his cock, then an incredible friction from Sesshomaru rubbing up against him, over him, all around – a quick nip around his belly button almost made him yelp with surprise – then a deep kiss of his lips accompanied by caresses to his furry ears as his intended mate lined up his body against his and thrust against him without actually penetrating him, creating the most delicious desire in him, firing his senses from head to toe.

He strained lightly against the sashes, wanting to pull as hard at them as if they were chains, but knowing that he could not or they would break, and his instructions were not to damage them. Needing to refrain from tearing them stimulated his senses even more, and concentrated them all on what his partner was doing to him.

More oil and warmth, and perfect demon skin gliding back down his body, before his balls were unexpectedly but gently taken into Sesshomaru's mouth, teased and stroked with his tongue and the top and sides of his mouth, but untested by fangs that understood how sensitive this part of him was.

Another quick nip, this time on the inside of his left thigh, making him whimper with excitement and groan as his lover returned to giving his attention to his by-now extremely hard and erect organ. He cried out as Sesshomaru gave him what he wanted, with fingers or palms or toes, he cared not, rapt with the concentration of blissful sensation in that aching, needy appendage that was capable of transmitting so much pleasure throughout his entire being.

Sesshomaru changed the pace, holding his racing urges in check and keeping him on the edge, keen for the variation and interest while longing to forge ahead without pause. Slower, then faster, then a different rhythm and feel, then faster again, sometimes going partway up and down the shaft and sometimes right up over the tip.

At last, his mate-to-be stroked him firmly, more quickly than before, and he was finally allowed to climax. He came with a cry, his whole body feeling for a moment as to be suspended without an ounce of the familiar tug of gravity on it, floating through the vast space of his psyche.

Then the feeling of the silk unwrapping from around his wrists and ankles, and the blindfold removed. But he might as well still have had the silk over his eyes, for he only wanted to keep them closed and seek the warmth of his brother's arms and feel his body curling around him, his gentle mouth whispering endearments into his ears, soothing him to sleep.

…

When Inuyasha awoke some time later, he smiled to himself and slipped out from under his brother's arm. He pulled on his white shift and undertrousers, and quietly left the room, nodding to the guards in the corridor as he slipped into his own bedroom.

He very much liked everything that Sesshomaru had done to him, but it had also made him a little nervous to know how easily his brother could draw the strongest responses from him, and how well he knew his body and mind after such a short time spent living together.

After visiting the bathroom and spending a few moments washing his hands and wiping his body down with a towel he had dipped into the bathwater, he lay down on his own bed for some rest and privacy, and to get some physical distance from the one who knew him so well.

It was remarkable that he and Sesshomaru were to be mates after such a bad beginning – and how the talk of it seemed to have spread everywhere over the past week, despite the lack of an official announcement. Once again, he was concerned that things were moving too quickly. He certainly found Sesshomaru attractive, and Sesshomaru seemed to genuinely care for him the way he cared for no one else. But did they love each other?

He considered that question as he slept lightly. However, he did not arrive at a conclusion by the time he opened his eyes again after sleeping for a short time. It was still the middle of the night.

He decided to return to Sesshomaru's bedroom, so that the demon lord would not miss him upon awaking. Very quietly, he turned the handle and slipped into the room without a sound. The instant he looked into the interior of his brother's room, however, he caught the merest glimmer of a shadow – a glassy, towering shadow – stealing its way across the floor towards the bed where Sesshomaru lay. It was hard even for his sharp eyes to see, because it blended in with the things around it.

Inuyasha was sure the shadow had seen the door open, but either he was mistaken, or it was choosing to ignore him.

Without hesitation, he snatched up his Tetsusaiga from the side table where he and Sesshomaru had set it down earlier, and unsheathed it. As the blade flared to life, the shadow stepped into the moonlight, and Inuyasha was startled to see that it was a massive demon made entirely of mirrored glass, from its hair to its eyes to the tips of its powerful fingers and strapping legs.

At the back of his mind, it registered that he could neither smell this demon nor detect the tiniest iota of demon aura from around it – he could only see it, not sense it in any other way. But there was no time to think about that. With a bloodcurdling yell which brought the guards rushing into the room, Inuyasha swung his blade at the intruder.

Sesshomaru leaped clean out of his bed at the same time as Inuyasha shouted and the guards entered. He landed on his feet on the floorboards and took in the situation at once. He was as surprised as Inuyasha was to have no sense of the intruder's smell or aura, but ignored that while he swiftly knotted a nightshirt around his naked loins, then seized the blade he had taken from the armoury days ago. Now armed, he bore down on the assailant while Inuyasha attacked from the other side.

The guards moved in, but the intruder swept them away, sending them flying against the wall near the desk with one hefty arm of solid glass. It focused only on Sesshomaru. A sharp, glassy blade sprang out of its right hand, as if growing from the very material the demon was formed of. With that blade, it engaged Sesshomaru in combat, while with another blade growing out of its left hand, it held off Inuyasha's Tetsusaiga.

Glass shavings scattered from the assailant's body and blades as the two brothers attacked it, but every speck of those shavings gathered themselves up and flew back onto the demon's body, assimilating with the rest of the glass. Although the battle was swift and furious, the intruder's cold, silvery eyes regarded the dog demons as expressionlessly as if it was standing still. The Tetsusaiga cracked the glass creature's left blade repeatedly, but right before their eyes, the cracks repaired themselves, and the mirror blade grew whole again.

Tired of being ignored and held off while all the proper fighting was going on between the intruder and Sesshomaru, Inuyasha interposed himself between them. To his astonishment, the mirror demon pulled back immediately and refused to attack him, then moved around him like a flow of liquid glass to launch a renewed assault on the demon lord, barely pausing to sweep and kick aside the guards once more, along with those under the window who had jumped into the room upon hearing the cries of their comrades.

"Hey! Fight _me_!" Inuyasha yelled, bringing his sword down on the demon's head. "Why don't you fight me?"

The Tetsusaiga glanced off the polished glass head and cleaved the intruder's right shoulder in two. The mirrored surface cracked and broke, but as before, made itself whole in seconds. The thing seemed indestructible – and it still had no scent or aura that any of them could sense.

Repeatedly, the mirror demon ignored Inuyasha and attacked Sesshomaru, getting itself impaled, dismembered and shattered by the demon lord's blade, yet reforming over and over again within moments. It was obviously an assassin, with orders to kill Sesshomaru and Sesshomaru alone.

Even the great demon lord would be worn down under such an attack, by a creature with so much strength, and which appeared impossible to stop or permanently break.

Sesshomaru's skilful blade continued to keep it at bay. The assassin could not get a strike in close enough to the demon lord's body to maim or kill him. But over and over again, the glass blade crashed down onto Sesshomaru's sword, with such force that the metal creaked and the nerves of his arm throbbed and fired with pain.

The guards, joined by even more reinforcements, piled on top of the intruder and tried to bring it down, giving Sesshomaru momentary respite. But mere seconds later, the slippery assassin shook off every one of the guards and ejected from its body the blades they had sunk deep into it. It then struck Sesshomaru's sword again and shattered the steel.

One of the blades lodged in its spine shot out of its body and spun around in mid-air to sink into the throat of the guard to whom it belonged. Angered to see a royal-wing guard he knew and trusted incurring a possibly fatal wound, Sesshomaru seized a sword dropped by another guard and flew at the assassin bare-handed, driving it back towards the window so fiercely that his borrowed weapon also broke as he used his free hand to haul Inuyasha out of the way of the back-pedalling intruder.

The mirror demon flew swiftly backwards to land neatly on the window ledge. With the space and distance it had thus gained, it pointed one long, thick finger at Sesshomaru and fired a glass shard out of its tip.

That shard would have hit Sesshomaru directly in the heart, open and unguarded as he was in that instant, no sword in his right with which to deflect the shard, and his left arm stretched out towards Inuyasha.

Without hesitation, and without waiting to discover if Sesshomaru would be able to dodge the missile, Inuyasha threw himself between the shard and his brother's body, holding up the Tetsusaiga to deflect the glass. He blocked it, but the slippery piece glided smoothly over the surface of the great blade instead of ricocheting away as a normal shard would have done, nipped over the edge of the blade, and tunnelled deep into Inuyasha's belly.

The mirror demon froze on the window ledge. It had hit the wrong target, one it had tried to avoid harming, and it suddenly did not know what to do. The guards charged at it, but it disappeared before their eyes. Rather, it shrank into itself so rapidly and turned into a shard so small that none could track it as it shot off into the sky and vanished into the night.

Sesshomaru did not see the mirror demon disappear. He did not see or hear his guards rushing after the speck of glass and calling for their colleagues mounted on fire cats to search the air for the shard. He saw nothing, heard nothing and felt nothing except Inuyasha collapsing into his arms with a dazed look on his face, a spreading circle of red invading the pure white fabric of his shirt.

"Inuyasha!" Sesshomaru cried, clutching the boy to him.

Inuyasha looked up into his face, unable to speak, seemingly unable even to draw a breath. Sesshomaru imagined that was a terrible enough thing to see, until the terror grew worse for them both as the single shard which had entered the boy shattered into hundreds of tiny splinters within him, tearing his insides apart and sending him into such a hell of agony that he screamed, then went rigid before falling completely limp in his brother's embrace.


	36. Pain

In a haze of pain, Inuyasha came around to find himself lying on Sesshomaru's bed, a sea of anguished faces hovering over him.

Sesshomaru was holding his left hand, which still wore the engagement ring and cuff. The demon lord was stroking the hair on his head, his eyes twin amber hollows of anxiety and his lips set into a pale, grim line. Natsumi was crying quietly while sponging at the blood still pouring from the point in his belly where the initial shard had entered his flesh. Satoshi knelt beside the bed, eyes closed, palms down over Inuyasha's bared chest and abdomen, concentrating so hard on what he was doing to keep him alive that beads of perspiration stood out on his brow. Guards surrounding the bed to shield him from a possible further attack turned back now and again with concern on their faces, and attendants in the background dashed to and fro, carrying basins of water and strips of blood-soaked bandages. At the desk, Jaken, and a few healers he had not met before pored over thick tomes, frantically searching for a cure. Someone had placed a leaf of Bokusen'o's into his right hand, and he felt the warmth and encouragement from his tree-demon godfather.

"Inuyasha?" Sesshomaru said his name. "Keep your eyes open. Don't slip away from me."

Everything hurt. He could now smell Naraku's scent all over the glass shards scattered throughout his insides. Needles, countless needles, piercing him within with every breath he drew, and with every movement he tried to make. Tetsusaiga and Tenseiga keened fiercely from the side table.

"Sesshomaru…" he whispered, his chest and stomach torn with pain as he spoke.

"Don't try to speak. I know it hurts. The healers are doing all they can to keep the shards from tearing through you any further."

Inuyasha saw then that behind Satoshi, the old dog-demon healer, Yoshi, who had previously shown his dislike of him, was also present, and was pressing his palms to the wolf demon's back, lending him his strength. There was no dislike in his old face now, only deep worry, and that more than anything else told Inuyasha how bad the situation was.

"…they stop…" Inuyasha murmured. It scarcely made sense, and he knew he sounded delirious, but that was all he could manage to get past his lips as he tried to ask them what would happen to him if the healers stopped trying to keep the splinters in place.

Miraculously, Sesshomaru understood what he was trying to say, and he answered him: "If they cannot keep the shards in place, the glass will tear into your organs. The healers believe that after the initial shattering inside you, the small shards began tunnelling slowly towards your heart, lungs, stomach, liver and kidneys. They appear to have been designed to do that once inside someone."

Sesshomaru's voice was tight and angry; worse, he sounded guilty, knowing that the missile had been intended for him.

"It should have been me," he added.

Beside them, Satoshi did not open his eyes, but he spoke in a soft voice: "My lord, Your Highness, the only bright spark in this bad situation is that the shards seem to be moving very slowly for magical, organic splinters of this nature. Ordinarily, such splinters would fire within seconds throughout their target's internal organs. But I sense that they are moving slowly, possibly because they are inside the wrong target. That alone kept His Highness alive until we could use our magic to hold the splinters in place."

"How long can you keep them in place?" Sesshomaru asked.

Satoshi opened his lilac eyes now, and looked at Inuyasha, then at Sesshomaru. "To be honest, we can only slow them down significantly for the next few hours. Magical skills far greater than the powers of anyone in this castle are needed to do more than limit the damage. The rest is up to the strength and resilience of His Highness – only he can determine if he will survive the penetration of the shards into critical areas of his body."

Satoshi looked so sad that Inuyasha wanted to weep – he wanted to cry for himself, and for Sesshomaru whose heart he could feel breaking after it had just begun to heal from their father's perceived neglect, and for Satoshi whom he could see was blaming himself for being a failure of a healer… but his agitation made the pain worse, so he stopped feeling sorry for himself and swore silently that he would fight it the best he could. He now knew what would come, and he would put up the greatest battle against those insidious splinters.

But would the greatest battle he could fight be enough?

"Can't sit here… hours," Inuyasha whispered, looking at Satoshi.

"Yes we can," Satoshi replied firmly. "Even if old Healer Yoshi needs a rest, I can continue for days."

Yoshi, channelling his limited magical powers into his colleague, said: "What do you take me for, you young upstart? I don't have your magical skills, but I will lend you the strength of my demon spirit for as long as I can remain conscious – I would do nothing less for the prince who has saved my lord's life."

Inuyasha wanted to weep again, hearing words he had never imagined he would hear from an old face that had never looked upon him with kindness. But again, it hurt more to feel distressed, so he tightened his grip a little on Sesshomaru's hand – he could not grip it very strongly, not when every exertion tore through his nerves.

Natsumi had been crying so hard while trying to remain silent in order not to disturb the healers or further upset the brothers that her eyes were red and swollen. Faithfully, she cleaned up the blood that kept oozing out, keeping his skin and Satoshi's hands clean, and sending piece after piece of saturated red gauze into the basins and waiting hands of other attendants.

Inuyasha looked from her to Sesshomaru, whom someone – probably Isshin – had hastily clothed in a simple, thin robe. The scent of his own free-flowing blood was cloying, and the smell of Naraku from the splinters was disgusting, but he tried to focus on other scents too. Herbs on the burner. Jaken's distress. Hints of the forest coming from Bokusen'o's leaf. Sesshomaru's scent. Natsumi's tears. Satoshi's perspiration. The clean and comforting smell of the soft robe Sesshomaru wore, and which the side of his face could almost touch, so close was Sesshomaru seated by his pillow, so soft…

"Don't close your eyes again," Sesshomaru said. "We almost couldn't bring you round the first time. Don't slip away from me."

"Won't…" Inuyasha murmured. But he was tired and cold, and longed to curl up under a thick blanket, although he knew they could not cover his body at this time, not with all the healing going on and all the blood. Sesshomaru or someone else had slipped a woollen blanket under his body, and the corners of the blanket were pulled forward slightly over his shoulders and upper arms to warm him. Something else was warming his legs. But he was still cold, and sleepy, and…

"No, Inuyasha, don't fall asleep."

"Tired," he mumbled.

"I know, but you must not sleep."

To someone else, Sesshomaru gave orders: "Put more herbs over the water burner."

A stronger scent of stimulating herbs steeped in gently heated water soon suffused the air of his room, and helped keep him alert. Although it meant that he was more aware of his pain, it also made him feel less drowsy, a little further away from death. He gazed up at the ceiling, where Totosai's blue painting gave him interesting swirls and curves to stare at and trace with his eyes. He heard someone in the background whisper that messengers had been sent out to look for Totosai, but no one had found him yet. Inuyasha, however, knew that the crying of the swords would summon his godfather soon enough.

The effects of the herbs kept his eyes open for another hour, then they reached the limit of their effectiveness, and he grew tired again. He felt movement inside him, and saw Satoshi and Yoshi gather their remaining strength to push on and keep the splinters from shifting, but it wasn't working as well as before.

Inuyasha then felt something new and terrifying – a single-minded ferocity of will to stay alive. It seized his entire being in the most frightening way. He felt himself sliding helplessly into a state of non-mind, one that was ready to viciously rend and kill to keep this body of his going. He knew at once that this was what Totosai had warned him about – his uncontrollable demon half rising to the surface to take over his entire being and clutch unthinkingly at self-preservation.

No!

"Sess… Te – Tetsusaiga!" he hissed urgently.

"Inuyasha," Sesshomaru said. "I know what is happening. I see your eyes bleeding red and demon markings showing on your face. This could save you – your demon nature is physically stronger, so it has a better chance of keeping you alive. Let it out – let _me_ deal with the consequences."

"No!" Inuyasha summoned all his strength and his fading sanity to snap at his brother. "No… don't want… die mad. Tetsusaiga!"

He was in such pain, and was so upset that Sesshomaru ordered one of the guards to lift the Tetsusaiga carefully by its scabbard and bring it to him. The demon lord laid the sword on the bed beside Inuyasha, and the red soon turned to gold again in the prince's eyes, the magenta stripes over his cheeks fading away as the sword did its work of keeping his demon nature in balance with the human.

Inuyasha was in greater pain now, but he was glad that he would not die crazed and wild, not knowing himself or Sesshomaru, perhaps mindlessly killing Natsumi, Satoshi and everyone else in the room. It was too bad that everything hurt _so much_ … he stared glassily out through the small gaps between the guards standing at the foot of his bed and could just see the distant room windows and the purple hues of the world outside.

The sky was still dark, but the dawn was coming.

Inuyasha did not think he would live to see that dawn, so awful did he feel, with his flesh splitting inside him and the blood still oozing, although the flow seemed less… maybe all his blood was drained, and there was no more for his heart to pump out… so tired…

"Inuyasha! Stay with me!"

Sesshomaru's voice sounded strangely far away. He felt an odd sensation, a peculiar pressure against his spirit and all his senses, as if some powerful force was pushing against him. Something mighty and terrible was approaching fast. Was this how death heralded itself? Did it come winging towards one like a great demon whose spiritual aura extended for miles? Was this the end?

Beside him, Sesshomaru stiffened, and Inuyasha realised that something was indeed coming – something that his brother and all the other demons could sense. Surely death did not announce its arrival to everyone around a deathbed as well…?

The spiritual pressure grew greater, and the aura clearer. Sounds of servants hurrying around and calling out to one another downstairs and outside sharpened and grew in intensity, until Inuyasha wondered if Naraku was leading a massive army towards them.

But the staff did not sound panicked or afraid. They sounded excited, and Sesshomaru seemed even more tense now, although he remained outwardly calm. Was Totosai coming at last?

Then the aura softened but remained very much present, coming closer and closer, and Inuyasha wondered what was happening, until the guards surrounding the bed bowed and parted to let someone through.

That was when he saw a tall white figure, who entered the room with a graceful gliding motion and stepped smoothly up to the bed with a coldly curious question: "What have we here?"

Sesshomaru's mother had arrived.

…

This was not the first impression he had hoped to make on his father's first mate, the mother of his mate-to-be, Inuyasha thought. Not this – this sorry spectacle of a half demon bloodied and shivering and tearing apart from the inside out, being mopped up and soothed and encouraged by his brother and their attendants.

Her facial features were very similar to Sesshomaru's, except that hers had a regal feminine beauty. Her hair was pure white, her eyes just as golden as his own and his brother's, and the dark blue crescent moon marking in the middle of her brow was exactly like her son's. Her magenta cheekbone markings were also very like Sesshomaru's. The white and blue robe she wore was light but fabulously elaborate.

She gazed down at Inuyasha coolly as Sesshomaru stood up to bow to her, and remarked: "Interesting. Is this the sort of thing that normally happens to the intended mate of the great demon lord?"

"Mother," Sesshomaru said, equally coldly but urgently, his hostile tone a sharp contrast to the formal politeness of his bow. "Inuyasha was hit by a magical glass shard that was meant for me. Can you do anything about it or are you going to stand there and ask frivolous questions?"

Lady Shirakumo's golden gaze glided up to lock with her son's blazing glare.

"Oh my, Sesshomaru," she murmured with a hint of amusement in her voice. "How useful your mate-to-be is – did he volunteer to be the target of the missile, or did you throw him in front of you?"

Sesshomaru tensed so visibly that all the guards and attendants recoiled. With a ferocious growl, the demon lord answered: "Mother, if you have no intention of being of use here, get out of my castle and never come back again."

"Oh dear," she sighed lightly. "My son's sense of humour clearly has not improved since my last visit fifty years ago."

"There is nothing funny about this, Mother."

"No, indeed. Not with what I am sensing from my very distant nephew's wounds – magical organic splinters from the glass of a mirror demon. _Terrible_."

"Mother," Sesshomaru said in a warning tone.

" _But_ it seems that I've come just in time – despite my sole offspring's belief that any time I arrive is never a good time," Lady Shirakumo remarked, pointing a long, elegant finger at a spot on Inuyasha's chest and tracing a slow, careful line in the air over his body.

Inuyasha felt the pain of something moving again inside him, shifting much more noticeably than before, but in the opposite direction.

"That one was almost piercing his lung," Lady Shirakumo said with a cold smile. "Let's move it out of the way first, shall we? You healers are doing a good job, but I need you to lower the force you are exerting so that I can move these troublesome things with less resistance."

"But my lady, if we do that, all the splinters will be on the move again," Satoshi said.

"Not with _my_ magic. Work with me," she ordered, putting her left hand over Satoshi's right hand and guiding it to places where she wished to ease back on the resistance, while using her right hand to point splinters away from vital organs. Naturally, she could not resist slipping in a comment about the wolf demon healer: "Well, you're a young one, aren't you? A bit scruffy in your dressing but pretty enough. Not bad at magical healing, for all that."

Sesshomaru scowled. The situation was too dire for such frivolity.

One spot, in the middle of Inuyasha's chest, seemed to resist the lady's directions, but she casually flicked a fingernail at it, a wordless yet expressive way of putting it aside to return to later.

Then she told Satoshi to move his hands away, and for him and Yoshi to step back as she quickly took over, making a motion with her hands that appeared to gather all the splinters together in the centre of Inuyasha's torso. Inuyasha stiffened and gasped with pain, but he held on to Sesshomaru's hand and Bokusen'o's leaf, and gritted his teeth against the tearing sensations inside.

Lady Shirakumo stilled her left hand over the spot, holding the shards in place. Then she looked keenly at Inuyasha with a penetrating gaze that riveted him.

"Young one, these things now have to come out. I can thread each of them back the way they came, slowly and carefully, so that I can get them out of that bloodied hole in your stomach. Or I can draw them up through the skin, taking care to avoid piercing your liver, diaphragm, lungs and the tube that joins your mouth to your stomach."

"Get them out fast," Inuyasha muttered, clenching his teeth so hard he thought they would break.

"It will hurt awfully," Lady Shirakumo warned.

"Can take it," Inuyasha insisted.

"Very well. If you say so."

"Mother, if the pain of this method is only going to kill him, use the other method," Sesshomaru said.

"My Sesshomaru, have you so little faith in the strength of your father's son? These injuries and their resulting pain may well kill the son of a lesser demon immediately, but this child of your great father's will fight hard to the end and take much longer to die, if I am not very mistaken," she said, with incongruous whimsicality.

"Just get them out," Inuyasha strained to speak.

"Patience," she murmured. "I shall do so at once. Hold him still."

Sesshomaru and Satoshi held Inuyasha's hands and shoulders while Yoshi and Isshin went round to the foot of the bed to steady the prince's legs.

"You, stand by to collect the shards and put them into an iron box with a lid," she told Natsumi, who hurried to one of the cabinets, rifled around in it frantically, and pulled out an iron stationery box whose contents she hurriedly emptied onto the floor.

With painstaking care, Lady Shirakumo's finger traced mysterious lines in the air over Inuyasha's body again, before pulling back, as if drawing an invisible string with it. The air sparked with powerful magic. As the others watched, the first of the splinters pushed up through Inuyasha's skin like a needle, emerging from his flesh.

It hurt, and Inuyasha groaned from the pain, but he thought he could bear with anything as long as it meant that those things were coming out of him.

"You can pick it up, girl," Lady Shirakumo told Natusmi. "My magic will keep it inert for a while."

Natsumi lifted it carefully from his skin and put it into the iron box before quickly closing the lid. Over and over again, the process was repeated, each splinter poking a new hole through Inuyasha's creamy skin, and causing him a fresh stab of pain. It felt as if someone was stitching an elaborate pattern inside him, and the needle was flashing up through his flesh over and over again. He winced as the seemingly endless chain of shards kept coming, one after another, the next and the next and the next, for what felt like forever.

Natsumi sobbed audibly as each shard pierced Inuyasha to leave his body, but she focused on her job of putting the glass pieces away and closing the lid after every new addition to the box.

Finally, Sesshomaru's mother returned to the spot in the middle of his chest which had troubled her earlier. She pointed her finger at it, but quickly pulled her hand away. She tried again, but once more had to pull away.

"What is wrong?" Sesshomaru asked, observing the tiniest frown appear on his mother's brow.

"The key shard – the one from which the rest appear to have splintered, and the strongest of the lot, is a vicious one."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that every time I try to move it, it grows sharper and longer and threatens to kill."

"What can be done?"

"It is lodged in a very tricky spot, close to the young one's spine, heart and lungs. The slightest provocation makes it flare. The least touch from any of its sharp points could paralyse or kill him. We may have to leave it."

"We cannot leave a thing like that inside him," Sesshomaru said.

"Well, I'm afraid we will have to until I have had time to study it further. It is resisting my attempts to shift it, but I can coat it with a shield of magic to prevent it from shifting or growing. A very clever thing, this. If it had entered the target it was truly meant for – I mean you, of course – it would have killed you on impact. It is behaving itself ever so slightly only because your mate-to-be is a target it was apparently not meant to harm. By the way, thank you for so considerately informing me through such a curt letter about your intentions with regard to my very distant nephew. How charming to be told in such a way that one's only child plans to take a mate."

Sesshomaru held his tongue as his mother chose not to wait for his response, but to start on shielding Inuyasha from the key shard immediately. She focused her immense magic on the spot over the shard, directed her healing prowess at the magical glass, and concentrated on the task for many minutes until she could do no more, and withdrew her hand.

"There you go. It will stay put. It is still sharp and may hurt if you exert yourself, but it won't migrate. However, I must warn you that if the one who controls the shard gives it an order to kill, it will sharpen and kill immediately. I suspect that will not happen just yet as _you_ , my Sesshomaru, were the one who was meant to be killed, not this charming half-demon you engaged yourself to be mated to without first seeking my blessing."

"Inuyasha, are you all right?" Sesshomaru asked, guilt piercing him even more strongly as he gazed at the beloved face of his brother, pale and clammy with the strain of enduring such punishing treatment.

"I'm fine," Inuyasha whispered. He was, in truth, shattered. But relief flooded him as he moved his limbs and felt no more stabbing pains inside his body. To Sesshomaru's mother, he said: "Thank you, Lady Shirakumo."

"You are quite welcome. This is a most interesting case – I must add it to my volumes of medical remedies. Medicine is quite a hobby of mine, if you want to know. Now what should we do about these naughty little shards in this box?"

Lady Shirakumo took the iron box from Natsumi and moved a hand around it, sensing the nature of its contents.

"Difficult. Very difficult. The splinters have already joined up with one another into a single shard, and are waiting to pierce flesh again. Given enough space and momentum, they could even pierce this box. But I may be able to keep them quiet for a while…"

At this point, they were interrupted by a ruckus from outside, followed by an anxious and angry female voice remonstrating with the castle staff, the sound of a few quick blows exchanged, more noises and shouts, and a familiar voice shouting Sesshomaru's name.

The demon lord ordered his guards to stand down. At once, a gust of wind blew Kagura through the bedroom windows on a giant white feather. She jumped lightly off her craft, which shrank into something small enough for her nimble fingers to tuck into her hair.

"Sesshomaru!" Kagura shouted again, pushing aside with her magic fan the staff that a guard held out to block her way.

Sesshomaru held up his hand, and the guard stepped back. In the same instant, everyone in the room realised that Kagura was emitting no demon aura and no scent at all – just as the mirror demon assassin had given off none.

"I told you before that you would be able to sense and scent Kanna's mirror shard as well as you could scent her – but I did not know then that she would use _this_!" Kagura said grimly.

She held out her open hand. Resting in the palm was a strange blue shard which appeared to have been broken off from a larger crystal.

"What is that?" Sesshomaru demanded.

"It's a shard of a nulling stone," Kagura explained. "I first heard about such a stone many years ago, while I was still with Naraku. It was said to be able to completely disguise a demon's aura and scent. He sent us all out to search for it. But none of us knew then if it was pure legend, and I heard no more of it after I parted ways with my family. This morning, however, I was attacked by a demon grown from my sister's mirror, with no scent and no aura. I fought it with my fan, which worked against it once I realised what it was. As I said, no one knows better than I do how to deal with my sister's slippery mirror tricks. I drove my wind blades deep into its body, and knocked this blue shard out of it. Only then did the demon's scent and aura flood my house. And only then did I realise that the nulling stone is no legend."

"How did they bring such a thing into the castle without our noticing that any of their demon auras were blocked?" Sesshomaru wondered.

"There are so many ways it could have been done," Kagura explained. "They could have put a spell on a small animal and had it carry the nulling shard in separately from them –"

"The centipede which bit the art gallery custodian," Sesshomaru said quickly as the pieces fell into place. "A nulling shard. That is why we had no sense of the assassin's presence. And that is why my people found two holes in a sculpture in which we thought only the glass shard had hidden – it must have lodged there beside the nulling shard it was meant to work with. Where is the assassin now?"

"It turned back into a shard of glass and flew off into the sky. It cannot return so quickly undetected, now that it has no piece of the nulling stone with it. But once it finds its way to Naraku, it may obtain another piece and come back, concealed all over again… oh gods, has it hurt your brother?"

Kagura had only just realised that the pale figure lying in the blood-soaked bed was the prince.

"Those shards are very nearly unstoppable…" Kagura looked stricken at the thought that her family had done this to Sesshomaru's beloved brother.

"Nonetheless, I have stopped them, at least for now," Lady Shirakumo announced.

"My lady," Kagura bowed to the tall and imposing dog demoness. "Have you succeeded in removing the splinters with your magic?"

"I have. Except one that sits near his heart, spine and lungs, and resists all attempts to shift it by growing sharper and longer every time I try."

"That would be the key shard. It cannot be removed by magic, only by physical intervention. However, on occasions when it does not kill upon impact, it is designed to swiftly position itself so that attempts at physical removal will probably end up killing the one in whom it is lodged. It would be placed so that trying to cut it out of His Highness' body would only mean cutting through his spine, heart or lungs – which would be fatal even for one as strong as the prince."

"It wasn't meant for him," Sesshomaru said quietly, in a voice that was as close to utter misery as Inuyasha had ever heard from his brother. "It was meant for me."

Kagura's eyes brightened at those words. "That means it may not act as aggressively in him."

"We realise that now, but the fact remains that we cannot do anything about that thing inside him. The assassin even tried to avoid engaging him in combat – it seemed to have been under orders not to hurt him. But Inuyasha leaped in front of me when it fired its shard, and took what was intended for myself."

"It tried to _avoid_ him?" Kagura asked sharply.

"Yes."

"So _that_ was what happened with Hakudoshi!" she exclaimed.

"What are you talking about?" Sesshomaru asked.

"You told me a week ago at my house about Hakudoshi touching Inuyasha's hair. Now I understand. He wasn't doing anything to your brother's hair – he was taking a loose strand to press into Kanna's mirror, so that it would send orders to the shard it had left behind to identify him as the one who must not be harmed. Naraku did not want to hurt your brother. He only wanted to kill _you_!"

"So Inuyasha should never have been hurt," Sesshomaru said grimly.

"If he did not want the prince hurt, he would have tried to make more certain of that by protecting him in other ways," Kagura said quickly. "Did Naraku give him anything of a protective nature?"

"The amulet," Sesshomaru said.

"Where is it? If His Highness had been wearing it, the shard would never have entered him."

"It's too late for that now."

"Yes, but perhaps we can still use it to reduce the shard that remains in him."

"Of course," Lady Shirakumo said, her golden eyes widening. "A protective amulet designed to shield someone against such an attack could work in combination with magic to shrink and round out any such shard remaining in the particular person it was meant to shield."

"Fetch that amulet from the treasury immediately!" Sesshomaru ordered.

Attendants and guards rushed out of the room towards the treasury at top speed and returned shortly with the golden amulet.

Lady Shirakumo examined it with interest. "It has been some time since I have seen anything as beautifully made as this, with such protective capabilities. In the shape of a spider-demon courtship gift too! Fascinating."

She experimented with it by holding it between her hand and the iron box in which the splinters were housed. Within seconds, she declared herself very satisfied. She moved quickly over to Inuyasha, and placed the amulet on his chest. Once again, she directed her magic into his body, but through the amulet this time. When at last she withdrew her hand, she had a smile on her face.

"Excellent. This has allowed me to shrink the shard and blunt its ends without retaliation from it, although it continues to resist removal in its usual aggressive way. I am pleased to announce that the shard is now a rounded piece of glass, like a small marble, nestled in this handsome young chest – such beautiful muscles! It won't move of its own accord now. I must caution you that if the one who controls the shard chooses to command that it be made sharp again, it will still respond. However, as you were not the target of the assassination attempt, we can hope that it will stay inert. With the object inside you nicely rounded now, you should be able to exert yourself as much as you like once you recover – _if_ you recover!"

Sesshomaru glared at her again, but his main concern was Inuyasha.

"Do you feel better?" he asked softly, stroking his hair and ears.

"Yeah. Lots."

"He has lost much blood," Sesshomaru's mother warned. "That may still cause trouble. The bleeding should stop now that no more shards are piercing him inside, though so very much has poured out of him. He must rest very well for a few days to give his half-demon powers a chance to heal him. He's not completely out of danger. But for now, he can sleep."

Inuyasha, who had been fighting his fatigue for so long, heard Lady Shirakumo's words. He locked eyes with her, then looked at Sesshomaru, who nodded gravely to him. At once, he closed his eyes with a sigh of relief, and sank into a deep rest.


	37. A Little Hope

Many hours later, Inuyasha stirred in Sesshomaru's bed. No stabbing pains troubled him, but he felt weak and very cold, even though woollen blankets covered him from chin to toe. He shivered, and gentle hands immediately placed another blanket layer over him.

Without opening his eyes, he knew that Sesshomaru was the one beside him, tending to him. The scent and sounds of the room had changed. The stimulating herbs were no longer on the burner, and far fewer people surrounded the bed. The two swords were quieter now, Tetsusaiga humming gently beside him, and Tenseiga singing softly from the side table.

He peeled his eyelids open and saw that the window shutters at the far end were closed and barred. Only Sesshomaru, Satoshi and Natsumi were in the room with him – and someone else… Totosai was here at last.

"Water…" he whispered.

Totosai rose from the floor in the far corner of his room and walked over to the bed to peer at him while Natsumi lifted a cup and porcelain spoon off the side table, and began to spoon the wonderfully refreshing liquid past his lips. After a few spoonfuls, he tried to sit up and grasp the cup, but his belly and chest hurt so badly when he moved that he gasped and fell back onto the pillows.

"Don't do that," Sesshomaru said softly beside him. "You are far from ready to move at all."

"I've always healed fast."

"Not after being ripped apart from inside," Totosai murmured. "You'll not be healing so soon this time."

"Where have you been?" Inuyasha asked the fire demon in a whisper.

"I took a long detour to alert Sesshomaru's mother once I heard the swords keening. I knew something had gone very wrong, and from their song, I judged that it would take powerful magic to repair the harm. My poor old cow, of course, can't fly anywhere near as fast as the lady in her dog form, tearing through the skies like lightning… and then she needed to stop and pee – I mean my cow, of course, not the lady."

"Your mother…" Inuyasha turned to Sesshomaru.

"She is setting up magical defences around the castle as we speak, using the amulet to shield this place specifically against the mirror demon we encountered. Even if it tries to fly in as the tiniest shard of glass, the barriers will prevent its entry, and alert us to its presence."

"Will it come for you?"

"If it does, I will destroy it."

"You weren't so good at doing that first time round," Inuyasha remarked wryly.

"I can tell from such a remark that you're feeling better," Sesshomaru commented optimistically.

But he wasn't, as they discovered when the hours passed and he grew worse. He shivered uncontrollably, turned clammy all over, and became slightly delirious. He was in no condition to attempt swallowing food, and Sesshomaru worried that without nourishment, he would take even longer to heal. He was also concerned about the time they had left till the new moon – only six days remained before Inuyasha would turn human, and his human form could never survive such devastating injuries. He would have to heal completely before then.

If wishes had half the power their senders longed to imbue them with, Inuyasha would be up and about and rosy with health by now, for every minister who had sat in yesterday's meeting with him had sent urgent and heartfelt messages of concern for the courageous prince with all their hopes that he would quickly be well again. The children of the castle, too, wished with all their hearts and sent handwritten notes bearing their good hopes for the kind prince.

But wishes can only do so much, and despite the prayers of all the ministers and the entire castle, as well as everyone beyond it who had heard of the prince's bravery, Inuyasha remained very ill.

"I suspect an infection," Satoshi said to Sesshomaru, examining the half-conscious prince with grim concern. "A half-demon with His Highness' strength would not usually suffer infections of any kind, but those shards inside him must have been tainted heavily with magic, and the gods only know what else. We must help his body to overcome this – we cannot reach inside him to heal the wounds, but we can help him from outside, and by means of medication that he can swallow."

"The Lady Shirakumo's magic can seal the wounds inside him to some extent, but that may work against him in the long term, because wounds sealed over in that way do not always heal neatly – there may eventually be scarring and tightening of the flesh," Totosai said, looking thoughtfully at the prince.

"Leave it," Inuyasha mumbled fiercely, opening his eyes a crack. Those words pertaining to his future well-being had reached him through his fevered mind, and he was determined not to recover in any way other than how his body had always healed itself.

He allowed Satoshi to keep him warm with thicker blankets, and to offer him a nourishing medicinal broth which he was able to swallow a little of, with Sesshomaru supporting him in a half-sitting posture. When he could take no more of it, the others withdrew, leaving the brothers alone.

Sesshomaru did his best to feed him the rest of the broth, but he could not drink any more of it, wanting only to close his eyes and rest. The demon lord was subdued, and angry with himself for failing to protect his intended mate. He sat beside Inuyasha on the bed, watching over him as he slept and attentively responding to every half-conscious movement, but his bitterness lay deep inside like a coiled snake waiting to lash out at the first worthy target. His troubled aura disturbed Inuyasha and roused him from his restless sleep.

"Are you in much pain?" Sesshomaru asked at once, when those golden eyes opened and reflected hurt from their depths.

"Everything aches."

"I'll call the healers back."

"Don't," Inuyasha whispered. "Everything's been aching for hours. Nothing new. Don't fuss. Just stay here with me."

"If you feel worse, I must send for the healers. I don't want to lose you, Inuyasha. Not like this, not this…"

"It doesn't matter," Inuyasha said softly. "I don't matter, not in the long term. I can't give you heirs, and in the grand scheme of things, I'm nobody, really."

The coil of tension inside Sesshomaru snapped as he registered Inuyasha's words. He would not lash out at his brother, but he struck at himself, as he saw what a disappointment he had been as an elder brother, lord and mate-to-be.

"I've failed you," he murmured bitterly. "I've failed you by not showing you or telling you how much you mean to me. To hear you say what you have just said – to think that you might have such _thoughts_ – tells me how badly I have failed."

A strange gleam shone in Sesshomaru's golden eyes, and Inuyasha was stunned to see that they glittered with the hint of tears – a sight he had never thought he would see.

"Don't you dare cry," he growled softly. "Demon lords never cry."

"They do when the one they love with all that is within them tells them that he thinks he is _nothing_ and _nobody_. I never want you to imagine that such an idea could be true. You can never again be nothing and nobody to me, not even three thousand years from now when we are old and dying. You are the one I care for – the one I _love_ – the _only_ one. I shall take no other mate but you, not now, not ever."

"You will need children – you said so yourself," Inuyasha said, to distract himself from the lump springing up in his throat as he heard Sesshomaru declare his love. He had known it from his actions, of course. But no one in his life had ever told him that they loved him, except his mother, who had always said: _I love you so much, my little puppy._ Even Kikyo and Kaede, constrained by the proper behaviour expected of priestesses, had never said that they loved him, only showing in it everything they did for him.

"We will find other ways to get children," the demon lord said in response to his brother's comment.

"Will we?"

"Yes. I promise you that."

" _Without_ magic, please – you _have_ seen how Naraku's brood turned out."

That drew a tiny smile from Sesshomaru at last. "Yes, without magic. We will think of something. But there will be no 'we' if you are not by my side. You must live and be well again."

"I'll do my darnedest."

"You do that, or I'll –"

"Yeah, sure, you'll spank me till I can't sit down for a month."

"Don't think I won't."

"Ooh, I wouldn't dare. How is the guard, by the way, the one who took a blade in his throat?"

"Alive, and very fortunate that the blade passed clean through the soft tissues of his neck without severing anything vital. He might well have lived even then, but it would not have been certain."

"You sure keep a bunch of tough folk around you."

"Indeed I do. You're my prize specimen."

"Ha ha."

The brave banter belied Inuyasha's pain, but it helped take his mind off his misery, and it did strengthen him a little so that he could drink more of the broth. There were no needling sensations now, but he seemed to be on fire inside and out, and every breath he took was an agonising reminder of how sore and battered his body was.

Later, when Inuyasha was asleep again and his fever went up slightly, Sesshomaru swallowed his resentment against his mother and asked her to take another look at him. The dog demoness went to his room at once, looked over the boy, and explained that the shards had left many wounds inside. He would feel worse before he felt better.

"The bleeding has stopped," she told Sesshomaru. "But because those shards were not designed for him, they avoided piercing his vital organs when they first began to scatter inside him. So they pierced everything else – muscles, cartilage, even bones – before gradually inching towards the organs they had initially steered away from. Therefore, it will all hurt for some time until he heals completely. The good news, Sesshomaru, is that I think he has a chance of pulling through after all, and being as well as before once he heals. His blood seems to be replenishing itself, helped along by the young healer's medicine, and the fever is not too bad. You have chosen a strong mate, and a brave one who cares enough about you to be ready to die for you. But he will give you no children unless other methods repellent to our tribe are used."

"We will use none of the kind of magic that could impregnate either himself or me," Sesshomaru said. "Inuyasha and I are both firm on that point. There are always other ways. Concubines… females paid to bear our young… we will devise a plan when he recovers."

"A child born of a concubine or a hired dam may not have the backing of the people as such females are unlikely to hail from noble stock – although if the offspring's father is powerful enough, and the child itself turns out well enough, in some cases it does not seem to matter who or what its mother is."

Here, she looked meaningfully at Inuyasha, who was still sleeping fitfully. "I hear good reports of _this_ child," she added.

"He has turned out very well," Sesshomaru agreed. "Better than I have."

"Is that my fault, Sesshomaru?" Lady Shirakumo asked.

"You are not without blame."

"Perhaps not. You were born naturally cold like me, but the way I brought you up, showing you no other way but to be powerful and arrogant, did not help. I was very, very much younger than your father when we became mates, so when I bore you, I was far from mature in character and mind. I have learnt much since going home and growing up. I thought fifty years ago that it was too late for me to change you, but it seems that someone else has done it for me."

"Why did you leave me?" Sesshomaru asked, not without a trace of bitterness. "Inuyasha's mother never left him until death tore her from him, after she had held on for as long as a mortal could."

"I left you because your father was important to you, and because I knew that if I stayed by your side any longer, you and he would never have the space or opportunity to understand each other."

"With or without you, we never did understand each other."

"Oh, you'd be surprised," she remarked. "He loved you, Sesshomaru, and he understood you well enough to want only the best for you. He wanted you to become not only as strong as he was, but to surpass him. Did you know that? And did you know that when our anger against each other cooled, he often wrote to me, telling me about you? Did you know that he hesitated to grow closer to you because he believed that it would estrange you from me? His plans failed, of course. It appears that you became estranged from us both. But he loved you so much, and he was so proud of you."

"If he thought so much of me, why did he bar me from using his most powerful sword?" Sesshomaru wondered. "Why did he leave it to Inuyasha? I no longer begrudge the boy that inheritance, but I have to wonder if Father thought so little of me as to believe me unworthy of his strongest weapon."

"First, your brother needs the sword more than you do – as you know well by now. Also, your father did not want you to use a sword so powerful as a crutch. You must find your own way. I cannot tell you how to do that, because it will be no good if it is not _your_ way."

Sesshomaru looked keenly at his mother. He had never heard her talk like this, sensibly and seriously, without sarcasm or iciness or flippant remarks that were provocatively tangential to whatever important matter was at hand. She was a different demon now from the one who had swept elegantly into the room this morning and spoken so carelessly as Inuyasha lay dying. Totosai had said before that she had mellowed and changed, but this was the first Sesshomaru was experiencing of it with his own senses.

He wished she had always been such a mother to him. She had not been like this for most of his life, and he wondered if it was too late to repair the damage between them.

But Inuyasha was stirring again, and as he moved to attend to him, Lady Shirakumo slipped away without another word.

This time, the prince did feel better. He was more alert, and in less pain, although his muscles still ached. He could breathe without too much soreness. As the evening turned into night, he strengthened with each hour. By midnight, when Natsumi offered him some porridge with eggs beaten into it, he was able to eat a few mouthfuls.

Sesshomaru's heart lifted. He spent the whole of the next day with Inuyasha, and was pleased to see the boy sitting up completely unaided by nightfall and tucking into the tenderest, most lightly seared slivers of beef and the best healing broths.

Now that he knew his brother and mate-to-be would live, it was time to turn his attention to the matter of how painfully he would make Naraku pay for hurting Inuyasha so badly.

But before that, there was an important matter to sort out with Inuyasha.

Sitting up across from him in the big bed, Sesshomaru took his left hand in both of his own and ran his thumbs over the gold cuff and ring. "Inuyasha, it was presumptuous of me to give you this without asking you if you wanted them. I never asked you formally if you would be willing to be my mate – I went from one thing to another and assumed that you wanted what I wanted."

"But I do," the half-demon replied artlessly.

"Still, I should have asked. So I will ask you now: will you be happy as my mate? Are you willing to be my mate and not just my brother?"

"If I were just your brother, you'd still treat me as well as you do now?" Inuyasha asked.

"In every way."

"So tell me, Sesshomaru, why I would want to be your mate."

Sesshomaru was taken aback, until he saw the playful twinkle in Inuyasha's eyes. He gave it some thought before saying: "Because I want the very best for you, and I want to be able to declare to the world that you deserve only the very best."

"Some ego you have – you're implying that you're the best, aren't you?"

"It is a fact."

"Arrogant demon. Now tell me why you want me to be your mate."

It was the other side of the first question. A different angle, yet so much the same. And Sesshomaru gave the only answer that was in his head and his heart: "This arrogant demon very much wants you to be his mate because he wants only the best for himself, and you are the best. Also, he loves you very much."

"That's a good answer."

"So is your answer a yes?"

"Yes."

Very carefully, to not provoke his healing wounds, Sesshomaru leaned forward and kissed Inuyasha on the mouth.

"I won't break, you know," the half-demon remarked.

"Oh, I don't know about that," Sesshomaru murmured.

"Just because I had some stupid shards of glass inside me doesn't mean I'm _made_ of glass," Inuyasha snapped.

The fear rose up in Sesshomaru again to think that there was still that one piece inside him which only awaited Naraku's command to flare up and pierce him. But Naraku had obviously not wished to hurt him, so perhaps it would be left alone…

But Inuyasha suddenly looked stricken with panic, and Sesshomaru's heart jumped into his mouth as he thought for a moment that the shard had grown sharp again.

"What is it?" he asked urgently. "Is it hurting you?"

"No, it's not moving – but what if it _does_?" the prince asked, backing away from Sesshomaru and putting his hands over his chest. "Sesshomaru – what if it senses you so nearby and shoots out of me and into you? Why didn't I think of that before? You have to keep away from me!"

"Never, Inuyasha. I will not keep away from you even if there is a chance that it will sense me and enter me. As it was not designed to hurt you, I can only hope that if it does leave your body, it will leave it in a way that will avoid all your vital organs and your spine, before it lodges in its rightful target."

"No – I don't want you hurt – Sesshomaru, no!" Inuyasha cried frantically, scrambling onto his knees and trying to push him away.

"It would only be right," Sesshomaru said grimly, moving in on Inuyasha and holding him as carefully as he could while he struggled, then slowly, ever so slowly, drew him closer and closer till they were chest to chest, Inuyasha terrified and Sesshomaru refusing to let go.

They remained like that until Inuyasha's panic diminished when he felt no movement from the glass inside him despite Sesshomaru's proximity. In contrast, Sesshomaru's disappointment grew to realise that he could not save his brother from the threat of the shard by sacrificing himself.

"Stop worrying for me," Inuyasha whispered at last as he began to sense Sesshomaru's sadness that the shard was not seeking its rightful target. "It will be fine, you'll see." He spoke from the relief of discovering that Sesshomaru would not be hurt by the thing inside him, even though he himself carried the burden of knowing what rested uneasily within, feeling the niggling concern about it in his mind the way a cold pebble in a boot makes itself known from time to time as one walks.

It was Sesshomaru's turn to sense his brother's worries for them both. He wished that the boy might have no burdens, so he pressed his lips to his again and lay over him as if to shield him from the world, careful to take all his weight on his arms so as not to put any pressure on his healing body.

All the time he made his silent wish to the gods: _Save him, and take me. No king ever asks that – every king believes he should live for the sake of his kingdom and his people – but I am asking you to save him and take me in his place._

But the gods too were silent, perhaps holding back their answer until the time was right to give it.

…

Because it seemed that the gods would not permit him to be harmed in his brother's place, Sesshomaru believed, in his anger against the spider lord, that the next best thing he could do was to turn the might of his armies against Naraku's kingdom.

He first sought the counsel of his ministers, who had all returned to the castle grounds and remained there upon hearing that the prince had sustained terrible injuries while protecting Lord Sesshomaru from an assassin.

"My lord," said Minister Atsushi, the first to step forward with his commiserations when Sesshomaru entered the meeting hall. "We are relieved beyond words to learn that His Highness is recovering. But I advise against waging war on Naraku's kingdom. It is exactly what he will expect you to do."

"Naraku sent an assassin to kill me, and ended up almost killing my brother and mate-to-be," Sesshomaru growled. "He _should_ expect war! He has escaped it many times for numerous provocations, but this time he has gone too far."

"My lord," Minister Atsushi said respectfully but firmly. "The fact that a shard of glass which is under Naraku's command remains within His Highness means that you must not under any circumstances ready your armies to attack Naraku's lands."

"Yes, my lord," Minister Ryota agreed. "I beg your pardon for speaking so bluntly, but the glass shard inside His Highness holds you hostage. If you send out your armies, and Naraku then threatens to activate the shard and kill His Highness, you would be in a difficult position, and all your soldiers and resources would be under threat."

"Naraku may not act further once he realises that he has struck the wrong target," Minister Atsushi said. "We understand that he did not wish to hurt His Highness, possibly because he had hopes of taking him as a consort. So it is unlikely that he will do anything more to provoke the situation as it stands. However, if his safety and life are threatened, he will hold nothing sacred, and I believe he will not hesitate to sacrifice the prince in order to save himself."

"But why did Naraku attempt to assassinate Lord Sesshomaru while taking precautions to protect His Highness?" Minister Mitsuharu asked from his seat on the other side of the room. "We know that the spider lord has long hoped to mate himself or one of his children to Lord Sesshomaru, to gain power in these lands and, in the future, put one of his descendants on the throne. It surely works against his purposes to kill Lord Sesshomaru. He could more easily have targeted His Highness instead of His Majesty, then used the prince's life to threaten Lord Sesshomaru."

Sesshomaru's mother, who had entered the meeting hall and taken a seat while her son was still speaking informally to the ministers and acknowledging their concern for Inuyasha, now stood and spoke: "Naraku knew that Sesshomaru would not welcome a mate from his family. I think he knew that even if he forced a mating alliance, there would be no guarantee that Sesshomaru would allow such a mate to bear him children. Sesshomaru could easily take another consort and have his heirs from there. And if my son refused to have any children with a spider demon, none of Naraku's descendants would have half a hope of claiming the throne. So he must have decided to get rid of the main obstacle in order to work his influence on a younger member of the royal family, one he may have believed was more pliable than his elder – although I rather doubt that, having seen him for myself."

"My lady, do you mean…?" Minister Mitsuharu asked.

"Yes, I mean that if my son dies without children, his brother will be his heir. Inuyasha is every bit his father's son, so in the absence of his older brother, he would inherit the throne. Naraku must have thought himself very clever – upon discovering that such a prince existed, Sesshomaru was no longer his only option. He thought to do away with the incumbent to make way for the younger, who, bereft of king, elder brother and mate-to-be all at once, might be amenable to advances from another lord. But as I hinted before, I rather doubt that Naraku had all his facts right – the child is quite as obstinate as his sibling."

"At this moment, I do not care who my heir is," Sesshomaru stated angrily. "I only care to know if the only reaction I am expected to have to Naraku's provocative actions is precisely _nothing_?"

"My lord," said Minister Atsushi frankly. "War with Naraku is probably inevitable, but this is not the time for it. May I suggest that for now, we should focus on the most important thing? That is, ridding His Highness of the threat that leaves him and yourself at Naraku's mercy. Once we can find a way to remove the shard of glass without harming him, Naraku will have no hold on you and yours."

"Minister Atsushi speaks wisely," Lady Shirakumo said.

"And how do we go about removing the shard from Inuyasha when even my mother's powerful magic cannot do it?" Sesshomaru asked in frustration.

"Shards such as the one in the prince are cruel and insidious, filled with dark spider and mirror magic," Lady Shirakumo remarked. "There is a chance that human monks or priestesses, with their holy magic, will be able to purify it better than demon practitioners of magic can. Although the purification will last only for a time, and they will be no more able to remove the shard than I can without killing or paralysing him."

"Still, if they can purify it, perhaps we will have a better chance of shifting it to a less vulnerable location in his body before cutting it out," Sesshomaru said, hope filling his voice for the first time in many hours.

"Are you on good terms with any powerful monks or priestesses, Sesshomaru?" Lady Shirakumo asked.

"I am not on particularly good terms with any humans. But my brother is. He is a close friend to two incomparable priestesses who would give their lives for him."

"Then there is hope."

…

In the land of the spider demons, however, it seemed for many hours that there would be no hope for rest or peace. Naraku had raged like an insane beast for more than a day, wrecking walls and furnishings and slaughtering slaves indiscriminately, when Kanna's mirror gave its report that the shard it had left behind had fired a lethal fragment which had not only failed to kill Sesshomaru, but had badly wounded Inuyasha instead. It had even lost the shard of the nulling stone in its attempt to kill Kagura.

When the mirror demon made its way back to the spiders' castle, Naraku shattered it into pieces in a terrible fury. So great was his anger with the mirror assassin that the splintered glass scattered everywhere like raindrops, and slashed the flesh of the spider children and attendants, drawing beads of blood from everyone. But because the mirror demon was a thing with no heart, it could not be destroyed in such a fashion, not even by Naraku, so the scattered pieces writhed and inched swiftly along the ground towards one another, and began to reform.

Only when Kanna raised her mirror and pointed it outwards did the tiny pieces of glass quieten and flow together into a single shard, which then melted back seamlessly into the notch that had marred the appearance of her weapon ever since it had been dropped on purpose on the floor of Sesshomaru's art gallery. One tiny scratch remained, almost invisible to the demon eye, to represent the dangerous shard which lurked inside Inuyasha, and its fellow splinters which had now merged into one piece in the iron box.

As the mirror began to report how it sensed that the shard inside the prince was now inert and rounded under the influence of the golden amulet's protective magic, Naraku gradually began to calm down. The mirror reported vaguely that its real target was close by, but firing the shard out of the prince and into the king would immediately end the prince's life too, and Naraku refused to take that option while there was still a chance that Inuyasha lived. He could not lose both brothers in one strike and cut off both his routes to greater power.

Indeed, the spider lord was only too ready to free Inuyasha from the shard, except that over such great distances, careful threading of the glass out of the prince's body without damaging him further was literally beyond Kanna's and his ability.

Naraku gradually quietened further when no news came of the prince's death. The spider lord slumped into the deep seat of his ornate throne to alternately smile and grimace to himself, like a creature gone half mad.

He dismissed his children and attendants with a wave of a pale hand, then grinned and grimaced to himself for some time more. Alone now, he chewed on the back of his left hand, nervously, until his knuckles were raw enough to require more than a few seconds to heal.

Finally, his assumed serenity grew into genuine calmness, as it sank in that Inuyasha was safe for now, and there would still be time to plot against Sesshomaru. From somewhere inside his compound body, one of his tentacles extracted a crumpled, torn sheet of paper which he stared at intently, reading the words written in Inuyasha's hand:

 _To Kikyo and Kaede._

 _It is so good to be able to write to you, and to hear from you. It is not the same as seeing you every day, but I will take what I can get!_

 _Everything is fine here for now. Things are going better. While I don't think I'm really accustomed to life in the castle yet, I suppose I could get used to it…_

The half-written letter that Naraku had inadvertently seized at the time he attacked Natsumi was looking very ragged after having been crushed between his tentacle and the racoon girl's body, but Naraku treasured it as if it were something most precious. For it was the physical evidence of fate, a trigger of the epiphany he had experienced while standing in the field before Sesshomaru's royal wing, sensing the words written on the letter he had touched, and also while running his hands over the beautiful marble statue of the young priestess.

It was unmistakably the prince's handwriting, for Naraku had the sample from Inuyasha's polite note in response to receiving the gold necklace and amulet to compare it with.

Inuyasha's handwriting… Inuyasha… Kikyo… the beautiful priestess from the village of the sacred tree. The girl he had attempted to take fifty-one years ago, until the tree had assailed him with its spiritual thorns. She must be old now, but the memory of her perfect, youthful beauty burned bright in Naraku's mind.

Inuyasha and Kikyo.

So the prince he desired was a friend of the exquisite priestess – another sign that the boy was destined to be his. He could not have the priestess now, old and dying as she must be, but he could take her friend, the prince.

He had to have the prince.


	38. Showing Appreciation

"It is _very_ good to see you looking so much better, Your Highness," Natsumi said, her eyes shining as she dressed Inuyasha on the first morning that he felt well enough to leave his room.

"It's good to feel better," Inuyasha replied, smiling at her reflection in the mirror. "Thanks for taking such good care of me while I lay there bleeding."

"I did nothing," she said softly. "I badly wanted to do so much more, you were in such pain, but I didn't know how to help…"

"You did great," he assured her. "Just having you there, and knowing that you cared, meant a lot."

"Jaken-sensei and Kazuki have been asking if they can see you. If you are well enough, perhaps I can bring them in?"

"Sure! I'd love to see them!" Inuyasha said, brightening.

Natsumi went out and led the kappa tutor and the assistant chef into the royal wing, where Jaken wept joyfully to see his student up and about, and Kazuki could only bow and say that he would be happy to personally cook anything that would help the prince feel stronger, at any time of the day or night, at a moment's notice.

Unlike Satoshi and Natsumi, who had had regular access to him, Jaken and Kazuki had been kept away to allow him to rest and recover. They had missed him, and he was delighted to see their friendly faces again, although he wished they wouldn't fuss over him like a delicate weakling, and Jaken wouldn't stare tearfully like that, as if he feared he would keel over any second now.

…

"I guess my best bet is to go to the village," Inuyasha said as he stood in the forest patch before breakfast that morning, looking up at Bokusen'o.

"It seems the best plan," Bokusen'o replied, gazing at him out of his wise old eyes. "I am sure I would be able to physically remove the shard from you by taking careful aim with the end of one of my roots, but I am also sure that the glass would sense interference from my demon aura as I attempt to do so, sharpen and grow inside you, and do you irreversible damage."

"You think Kikyo and Kaede will be able to do any better?" Inuyasha asked.

"I do not know, but perhaps they can purify the shard and reduce its viciousness."

Bokusen'o sounded sad and very tired.

"You've been worried about me, haven't you?" Inuyasha asked, putting his arms about the tree demon's trunk and pressing his forehead to the bark.

"I have. Once I sensed your distress, I ordered one of the guards near the wall to take one of my leaves, find your attendant, and have it put into your hand. The sensations I received through the leaf were terrible."

"Don't worry. I'm quite well now. I don't know what you've been doing with yourself to sound so weary, but for someone who just stands in the same place all the time, you sure seem exhausted!" he said with a grin.

"I'll have no cheek from you, little prince," Bokusen'o rumbled. "I am well. Perhaps I am just too old."

"Don't say that," Inuyasha murmured, upset at the thought that one day, this great old tree would be no more.

"I sense your brother approaching in search of you, filled with anxiety. You did not tell him you were coming out here, did you?"

"Nope. I kind of gave him the slip. He's been hovering over me like a fussy hen for days. He's hardly let me out of his sight except when he knows he can post, oh, about two hundred guards all around me."

Bokusen'o gave a low, soft chuckle as the demon lord swept into the forest patch, saying: "Inuyasha, why did you not tell me that you would be here? I thought something had happened when I found you gone from your room, and the guards said you had left no word as to where you were going."

"I'm fine," Inuyasha sighed. "Stop fussing. I can't mope around every minute of every day like I'm dying, right?"

"I was concerned for you."

Wordless prompting from Bokusen'o made Inuyasha realise that he had been thoughtless, and that he did appreciate knowing how much his brother cared.

"Sorry," he said, transferring his hug from the tree demon to Sesshomaru. "I didn't mean for you to worry. It's just that everyone's been tiptoeing around me like I'm already dead or something. Natsumi looks sad, Jaken keeps weeping, Kazuki seems terrified that if he talks too loudly I'll topple over from a gust of his breath… it's unnerving. I just wanted some fresh air and to talk to Bokusen'o."

"My mother doesn't tiptoe around you, and she will be entering the dining hall for breakfast at any moment, so we should be there as soon as possible if we do not want to be late."

They took their leave of Bokusen'o and walked to the dining hall, Inuyasha casting one backward glance at the tree demon, who seemed far more fragile and weary than he had ever imagined such a great creature could be.

…

It was the first time Lady Shirakumo had seen Inuyasha up, perfectly groomed from ears to toes and beautifully dressed by Natsumi in a white and russet robe.

"You clean up well," she remarked, casting an admiring glance over him that made him self-conscious.

Inuyasha walked up to her and bowed deeply. "Lady Shirakumo, I have not had the opportunity before this to thank you properly. I want to say that I am deeply grateful to you for saving my life."

"You are more than welcome," she replied, putting a finger under his chin and lifting his head to have a better look at his features. "I must say that you were a truly sorry sight when I first saw you, but I now see why my son is so besotted. Such a pretty thing – if you weren't already engaged to be mated, I would be quite interested myself – I did find my former mate very physically attractive, and you look so much like him, except for the ears."

Inuyasha did not know what to say, and he lost all his composure when, to his utter astonishment, Sesshomaru's mother stroked and pinched his bottom as she moved past him on her way to the breakfast table.

With a yelp, he swung about to face her, jaw slack and eyes wide.

"Mother…" Sesshomaru growled in warning.

"Oh, don't be so possessive," Lady Shirakumo sighed to her son. "It's good to learn how to share, my dear."

"Mother!"

"It's my fault that he ended up so selfish," Lady Shirakumo in a mock-confidential way to Inuyasha, who was still staring at her, mouth agape, finding it hard to recover from the shock of having his bottom fondled by the female who had once been his father's mate, and mother to his half-brother and mate-to-be. "He's never had to share anything in his life – although I understand that he has no qualms about sharing his body with females and males of all species and ages…"

"That is enough," Sesshomaru growled, giving her a murderous glare before casting Inuyasha a quick glance, not wanting his puppy to be reminded of his past promiscuous ways, or of his hurtful suggestion that he would have to share him with a female in the future.

"Speaking of selfishness, may your mother ask why you are still taking up space here, and why you have not whisked your little brother off to the priestesses?" Lady Shirakumo queried in a seemingly unconcerned manner as she spread honey over her bread roll. "I don't suppose you are planning to wait for him to turn critically ill before you act?"

Inuyasha's and Sesshomaru's eyes met. They had agreed in private that even when Inuyasha was well enough to get out of bed, they would not go to the village until after the night of the new moon. It would be too dangerous for him to be away from the castle at such a time, and Sesshomaru wanted to first make certain that his injuries would not do further harm to him in his human form.

The moonless night would come tomorrow.

"Inuyasha has only just recovered enough from his injuries to leave his bedroom," Sesshomaru said, seeing the boy to his usual seat at the dining table before taking his own. "I wish to wait a day or two more before I am willing to risk his health on a three-hour flight by dragon."

"I could carry him there in two hours in my full-dog form," Lady Shirakumo mused, looking brightly across the table at Inuyasha. "How pleasant it would be to have such a handsome creature on my back, muscular thighs pressed to my sides…"

"If you cannot be trusted around my intended mate, perhaps you should not be having breakfast with us," Sesshomaru scowled, taking a sip of his tea.

Inuyasha rolled his eyes and wondered if it was always like this between mother and son – cold silence alternating with sniping which comprised flippant suggestiveness from one party tossed against disapproving snarls from the other.

"We set off for the village the day after tomorrow," Inuyasha said with surprising firmness for a young one in the presence of his elders. "I will have recovered fully by then. Where's Kagura, by the way? I haven't thanked her yet for giving us the pointer about the amulet."

"She has gone out with Totosai to comb the area for signs of the mirror demon."

"So have you worked out exactly what happened?" Inuyasha asked.

"More or less," Sesshomaru answered. "We believe that Naraku put a spell, and demon poison, on an animal centipede holding the nulling shard. The creature was possibly dropped outside the castle grounds as they arrived, and would have carried the shard in at a signal from him. We believe he timed his visit to coincide with so many of our soldiers and guards being away. It seems that Byakuya spent much time conversing in an ostensibly innocent way with various members of staff, and quickly discovered which ones were not at their usual posts. The spiders must have settled on the art galleries – which they knew they would tour the next day – as among the places with lower security levels, and set the centipede on the north-gallery custodian. It would have entered the gallery, and under magical control, pushed the shard into the base of a sculpture to conceal it. With the custodian ill, no one would have the trained eye to notice immediately a tiny item with no aura and no scent. When Kanna shattered her mirror in the gallery the next day, it must have been spelled to embed one shard close to the nulling shard, concealing its demon aura. Once all was still, the glass piece would have moved itself from its hiding place, absorbed the nulling shard, then made its way to another location where it could wait, undetectable, until it received its orders remotely from the main body of Kanna's mirror. That was when it transformed into the mirror demon. Naraku sent the gold amulet before that to protect you, in addition to the protection you would have received when Hakudoshi stole a strand of your hair to press into Kanna's mirror, to inform the assassin that you were not to be harmed. Unfortunately, you chose not to keep or wear the amulet."

"'Unfortunately'?" Inuyasha snapped. "I'm _glad_ I didn't wear it! I don't care that I got hurt. I don't want _anything_ of Naraku's."

"It makes no difference, my darling. I am sure that if you _had_ chosen to wear it, my jealous, selfish son would have smashed the amulet into a shapeless lump of gold," Lady Shirakumo said casually, helping herself to a serving of porridge.

This time, Sesshomaru did not respond, probably because he knew that his mother was perfectly right.

…

Sesshomaru's concern and possessiveness were not improved by a request for an urgent visit by Ambassador Tsubasa of the demon birds. She was coming with only two attendants this time, she wrote, and would not be accompanied by a large group of bird beasts, so his people would not feel threatened. She would make a quick visit, and leave as soon as she had communicated her queen's message and received the demon lord's answer.

The ambassador arrived at noon, and was received in the throne room. Her dark, sparkling eyes immediately registered Lady Shirakumo's presence, and the figures of Totosai, Kagura and Inuyasha. She had heard of Lady Shirakumo and knew who she was. She had also met Kagura before, and knew of her history. Totosai was a curiosity, though otherwise of little interest to her. But it was the first time she had seen Inuyasha. She was intrigued by his bearing and beauty, and by the rumours she had heard of the courageous prince who had saved his brother's life at risk of his own.

"Lord Sesshomaru," Tsubasa addressed Sesshomaru, bowing. "I have come with an urgent request from Queen Abi regarding the security of the eastern coastline we share. Your Majesty will have heard of Lord Naraku's increased aggression towards the territory and inhabitants of my queen's lands. Many of his new raids on our people's dwellings are launched over the waters and beaches. My queen requests that Lord Sesshomaru close off his territorial waters and coastline to Naraku so that he will have less room to launch his attacks from there. While we have the right to pursue spider invaders from our territory into his, we can do nothing if they retreat all the way to yours. If they knew that your defences had been further stepped up, they would not dare to try that."

Sesshomaru had already implemented Inuyasha's plan, but he was not about to tell Tsubasa that they had anticipated the request, or that they believed it was to their own advantage to cooperate. So he remained silent for half a minute before replying: "Naraku already knows that my naval and coastal defences are such that his people had better steer clear of my territories there. However, I see no reason not to further enhance them, to pose a greater deterrent to him."

"My queen will be delighted and most grateful to hear this, Your Majesty," Tsubasa said. "It is because your naval and coastal defences are so much stronger than ours that we are obliged to ask for such support from you. We will not forget it. I beg the pardon of the Lady Kagura for speaking so openly in her presence of our hostility against her father."

"You may speak as you please, Ambassador Tsubasa," Kagura said. "My father has disowned me and tried to kill me, and I have disowned him. He is nothing to me now but a continual embarrassment."

"Give my regards to your queen and cousin," Sesshomaru said to the ambassador. "I trust that she is well, apart from the trouble that Naraku is causing?"

"Thank you for your concern, Lord Sesshomaru. My queen is very well. She is in fact seeking a suitable consort at this time. If not for the fact that I can see from the engagement cuff and ring His Highness is wearing that he is already betrothed, I would be bold enough to say that Her Majesty would be more than pleased to have a consort of such beauty and nobility – and courage, from what I hear."

Inuyasha's ears twitched from disbelief and embarrassment – he had never had so many suitors in his life. Sesshomaru, on the other hand, needed to summon a dose of willpower not to allow his facial expression to change as he replied: "Ambassador, you have a keen eye. But my brother is indeed engaged to be mated. Besides, I have a suspicion that you are overstating the interest your cousin might have in him – I know that Abi has no particular fondness for half-demons, and I am certain that Inuyasha, as a half-human, would not be happy in a land filled with bird beasts which feast on human blood. After all, we hear reports that eight-tenths of the human population in your territories has been wiped out by your beasts, and the remainder have literally gone underground to conceal themselves from the birds."

"Your Majesty," Tsubasa said, putting on a charming look of wide-eyed sincerity. "Whether full-demon or half-human, a consort of my queen's would be very well protected from all manner of harm. As for the queen's disdain for humans and half-demons, that stems from her old perception of them as weak and deformed. She has, however, changed her mind about half-demons, having recently met some strong and beautiful ones, including the daughter of the bat demon tribe leader – a very powerful and engaging half-demon girl-child. My queen has heard of Prince Inuyasha's strength, courage and beauty, and has expressed admiration for his qualities. If she could only see him, I am certain that she would be even more impressed."

Tsubasa bowed to Inuyasha to demonstrate that she was not merely talking about him as if he were not standing there.

"I thank Queen Abi for her generosity in expressing her admiration for me, based merely on reports," Inuyasha said, bowing in return. "I am, however, engaged to be mated, so it is impossible for me to think of anyone else."

He was not sure how he felt about Tsubasa, considering that she was the female he had smelt all over Sesshomaru the morning after the last new moon. But she appeared to be someone who could compartmentalise business and pleasure, and did not seem to have come here on this occasion with the aim of luring Sesshomaru into bed with her again.

"He is engaged to me," Sesshomaru declared. "I believe Queen Abi would not wish to challenge me for my intended mate?"

Tsubasa bowed again, with a smile on her face. "Lord Sesshomaru surely knows Queen Abi better than to think that she would do any such thing. Her Majesty will be disappointed to learn that His Highness is no longer available to her, but I can say for certain that she will be very happy for Your Majesty."

With business concluded, Sesshomaru invited Tsubasa to stay for lunch, but she declined, saying that there was much for her to do at home. She took her leave of them, sprang onto her mount, and flew off into the clouds.

Sesshomaru hoped that her departure represented an end to the discomfiting experience of having other individuals make advances to Inuyasha right under his nose – at least for the rest of this day.

He was aware that it bordered on the ridiculous to behave in this slightly paranoid way, especially because he had spent so many years cultivating his cold, detached persona. But loving Inuyasha, almost having to watch him die as he lay bleeding in his arms, knowing the threat of the glass shard poised next to his heart, and all the recent experiences of seeing other demons admire his puppy and try to seduce him were turning him into an anxious, overprotective creature.

Being aware of the absurdity of it, however, did not stop his paranoia from resurfacing when he returned to the royal wing after dinner to learn from Natsumi that Inuyasha had already changed out of his evening robes and gone off somewhere.

As his mother was in her bedroom near the far end of the corridor, Sesshomaru wondered if she had tempted him into her bed. But his nose told him otherwise – she was by herself.

So where was the boy?

The demon lord followed his nose and tracked him all the way to the ground floor, to the line of rooms and chambers between the royal wing and the administration wing – the healers' rooms. Following his nose further, he found, more specifically, that the boy was in Satoshi's room.

What was he doing there? If he needed treatment, he could have summoned the wolf demon to the royal wing. Was it necessary for him to go to the healer's room instead? And did they have to be meeting behind closed doors?

"Thanks for all you did for me," Sesshomaru could hear Inuyasha saying through the door. "I don't know how many hours you sat there going through magical-healing hell, but I want you to know that I really appreciate it."

"Do not give it another thought, Your Highness," Satoshi replied. "Whatever I went through was nothing compared with what you suffered. Besides, I was of little use to you, unlike the Lady Shirakumo. Old Yoshi was a great source of support to me, though."

"Yes, I know. I went to the main healing room to thank him, and learnt from him that you had already retired to your chamber, so I came looking for you."

"You needn't have done so. It was my pleasure to do what little I could for you. I only wish I could have done more."

"You did lots. You held those damned splinters in place until the lady came, didn't you?"

"I still wish I could have done better. How are your wounds? Would you like me to look at them?"

"They're okay – the deepest ones are still a bit sore, but the others are pretty much healed."

Sesshomaru listened jealously to the sound of Inuyasha's robes being untied and parted, although he detected no arousal or unbecoming personal interest on the part of either of the two males in the room.

"The flesh is healing well, and as quickly as can be expected for wounds of such a nature," Satoshi's voice came through.

"Well, let's see if the priestesses can do anything about the remaining piece of glass. I hate the stench of it – I get wafts of Naraku's scent coming off that shard now and again, and it makes me sick to my stomach."

Sesshomaru heard the rustling of dried leaves, then Satoshi saying: "Whenever it bothers you, sniff this mixture of leaves. Dried, torn up and mixed together in a clean linen pouch, these leaves make good scent neutralisers, and should minimise your discomfort, until someone can remove that shard from you."

"Thanks, Satoshi. Speaking of scent-neutralisers, I've been wanting to ask you for some time – do you know a way to disguise a human scent?"

"A human scent?" the wolf demon healer asked.

"Yeah. I can't really say why, but I need to know…"

"Your Highness, you need not tell me why. I suspect that I know, but I will not speak, as walls have ears."

Sesshomaru opened the door at this point and entered the healer's room. Satoshi bowed, and Inuyasha looked abashed to have been tracked down like this. He pulled his robes closed, as it occurred to him that the scene might not look innocent to his mate-to-be.

"Whatever you know or do not know," Sesshomaru said to Satoshi. "It is indeed not for you to speak of. In any case, Inuyasha does not need those particular scent-neutralising tricks so urgently, as I am the only protection he needs."

To Inuyasha's surprise, Satoshi disagreed, tempering his words with a deep and humble bow. "My lord," said the wolf demon. "I ask your pardon if I speak out of place, but as His Highness' personal healer, I am obliged to observe that whatever His Highness requires for his safety is always best if it can be provided by more than one source. Again, I ask your pardon for speaking what may sound offensive to your ears, but I must do my duty. Although Your Majesty's protection is more powerful by far than paltry magical tricks or medicinal herbs, these are dangerous times, and if Your Majesty should be absent from His Highness' side for any reason, then His Highness must have every other means at his disposal for keeping himself safe."

Inuyasha held his breath as Sesshomaru weighed the wolf demon's words, seemingly deciding between accepting his counsel grudgingly and ripping his head off for contradicting him. To his relief, Sesshomaru only said tersely: "Do what you must."

The demon lord took a seat in the simply furnished room and watched patiently as Satoshi first wrote down for and explained to Inuyasha the instructions for a reasonably straightforward magical spell that he would be able to use once he learnt the rudiments of magic and could manipulate the elements in the air around him. The wolf demon then turned from magical spells to medicinal formulae, giving the prince a recipe that could neutralise most human scents. Finally, he offered practical pointers that he said he had picked up from his fox-demon colleagues.

When he was done, Inuyasha thanked him with a grin before turning to Sesshomaru, who growled lightly to see that his robes were still partially undone – and that they had been so throughout his scent-hiding consultation with Satoshi.

To the prince's exasperation, and the wolf demon's more discreet amusement, Sesshomaru muttered to himself and secured Inuyasha's sash, casting the wolf demon a glance which seemed to say that if he had any amorous thoughts about the boy, he had better keep them entirely to himself.

Satoshi was wise enough to do nothing more than bow deeply and hold that bow until the demon lord and his intended mate were gone from his room and well out of sight.

…

The next evening, when the sun dropped below the horizon and there was no moon in the sky to take its place, Inuyasha changed his form.

The Sesshomaru of two months ago would never have believed that he could harbour so much affection for anyone in a mortal shape, but here he was now, holding his temporarily human half-brother securely in his arms while flaring his demon aura gently, hiding the boy's transformation from all in the castle.

They had closed the windows and pressed the fire rat robe to the base of the door so that the scents which seeped out through the gap at floor-level would be those of Inuyasha's half-demon self. The attendants had been dismissed early and told that they would not be needed in the royal wing until after sunrise.

Inuyasha squirmed slightly, still embarrassed to be seen in this form by his demon brother.

"Stop hiding your face from me," Sesshomaru whispered, kissing the jet-black hair. "Look at me."

Inuyasha raised his head and looked up at the demon lord, all wide violet-gray eyes and translucent skin, his eyesight adjusting to the flickering of the candles Sesshomaru had placed on the table and cabinet.

"See? Beautiful as ever," Sesshomaru assured him. "Now tell me if the shard is stirring inside you."

"No movement," Inuyasha said.

"Good. Now eat your dinner and drink your medicine. Mother hardly seemed to notice when I said I wanted a quiet meal with you in my room and that we did not want to be disturbed for the rest of the night, but I am certain that she is now trying to worm information out of Totosai in the dining hall."

"I guess it doesn't matter if she knows. She'll find out sooner or later."

"She has been known to eat humans in her full-dog form."

Inuyasha gulped. "Okay, maybe we'll wait until she's known me for _ages_ and likes me _lots_ more than she already does before we let her know."

"The fewer the people who know, the better. We do not want anyone using it against you."

"No one knew when I lived by myself in the wilds," Inuyasha said. "But it was frightening to be so weak once a month when I was usually so strong. Later, when Kikyo and Kaede learnt my secret, it felt scary too that someone else knew – but also better in a way, because they were my friends, and they were now looking out for me."

" _I_ will always look out for you," Sesshomaru said, dishing seared meat and well-boiled vegetables onto Inuyasha's plate. "You don't need tricks and spells from some wolf demon healer."

If Inuyasha's puppy ears had been on then, they would have pricked up at the note of annoyance in his brother's voice. "Jealous, are we?" Inuyasha teased, knowing that he was playing with fire as he was in no shape to outrun or outfight Sesshomaru.

The demon lord growled at the beautiful human boy sitting across the small table from him. "Eat," was the only word he uttered in response to the tease.

"Hmm, you really are possessive, for someone who only a few days ago told me I would have to share," Inuyasha sang out his words playfully, with mock thoughtfulness. "Yet you won't let _me_ near anyone else – why not, though? I'm the prince – I can sleep with anyone I want to in the castle – maybe I'll ask Natsumi if she wants to play… hmm, no, not her, it would upset Kazuki. So I guess it'll be Satoshi after all – he _is_ kinda cute, huh?"

"I see that you have no interest in your dinner," Sesshomaru stated, getting to his feet. "In that case, I won't be depriving you too much by interrupting your meal?"

Before Inuyasha could react, Sesshomaru picked him up under one arm and carried him to the bed, kicking and struggling futilely. He sat on the edge of the bed and placed Inuyasha face-down over his lap.

"You really were asking for it," Sesshomaru told him.

"Wh-?" Inuyasha began, then found himself unable to complete the word as the flat of Sesshomaru's hand came down on his bottom.

"Ow!" Inuyasha yelled at the top of his voice. "That hurts, you bully!"

He wriggled and squirmed and tried to get free, but there was no chance of getting away from a demon on a moonless night.

Sesshomaru was using only a tiny fraction of his strength, as Inuyasha's human body was much more fragile than his half-demon one, and they still had concerns about the shard inside him. But the boy had provoked him enough, and by the gods, he was going to be spanked, shard or no shard.

His hand came down again, neither hard nor swiftly, but Inuyasha still yelled as if he had been stung.

If the windows had not been shuttered and the door locked, and the guards told not to disturb them under any circumstances, they would doubtless have come rushing in to see if another assassin had entered the royal wing.

"You big bully!" Inuyasha shouted. "Hitting me on a night when I can't defend myself!"

Once more Sesshomaru's hand came down.

"And I took a shard for you too!"

That worked. Sesshomaru's arm snaked around Inuyasha's waist and easily pulled him upright, seating him on his lap.

"I know you did," Sesshomaru whispered, kissing him. "That is why it hurts to imagine you with anyone else. To think you might love me that much, and yet be with another, is something I cannot bear."

"I was only teasing," Inuyasha replied soberly, putting his arms round Sesshomaru's neck and kissing him back. "Just because you don't like thinking about something and can't deal with it yourself doesn't mean you have to take it out on my behind."

"I hardly touched you."

"You hit me."

"It was practically a caress."

"Not when I'm human."

"All right, I'm sorry. Let's take a look at the terrible damage I've done."

Sesshomaru flipped Inuyasha across his lap again and pulled his trousers down to expose his bottom.

"Hey!" Inuyasha bellowed once more. "You were supposed to stop that shit!"

"I have. We are moving on to something else now," Sesshomaru murmured, caressing the tight little ass under his hand – it was sleek and muscular, but the skin was a shade smoother and more delicate than when the boy was half-demon.

"Like what? Molesting me while I lie here like a piece of meat?" Inuyasha scowled.

"Nonsense. I am appreciating all the variety and appeal that my future mate has to offer me," Sesshomaru said.

"I would _appreciate_ it better if I could be upright and in a slightly more dignified position while being appreciated," Inuyasha said caustically.

"Very well," Sesshomaru sighed, relenting and righting his half-brother again, making him dizzy from being swung up and down like a rag doll.

" _If_ we are going to be mates," Inuyasha growled, shaking his head to clear the giddiness, when he was once again sitting on his demon brother's lap. "You will have to learn to _not_ treat me like a pet, even when I am human."

"All right."

They gazed in silence into each others' eyes for some time, gold meeting violet-gray, until Inuyasha said softly: "You really don't mind that I'm human sometimes, do you?"

"To say that I 'don't mind' implies that I would merely tolerate you on your human nights. That is inaccurate. I love you in all your forms, half-demon, insane full-demon, delectable human, and even animal, if we ever discover that you can take such a shape when you are older."

"You charmer, you."

Sesshomaru received a kiss, which he took as partial forgiveness from Inuyasha, so he tested the boundaries with a question: "Can I not treat you like a pet ever? Not even for our amusement?"

"Hmm… okay, maybe just for fun sometimes, but you have to get permission first."

"May I have your permission to treat you like my most-loved pet for a while tonight? It's hard to resist when you're so smooth and harmless and easy to move around…"

Inuyasha rolled his eyes, but said at last: "Oh, fine – just for a while tonight, but don't push it too – aaaarrrrgh!"

And he was face-down over the demon lord's lap again, with his unclothed butt in the air.


	39. Doing What Must Be Done

Kikyo's face was pale and drawn from a recent spell of poor health, which made her stern expression all the more stark.

Inuyasha and Sesshomaru had gone to the village the morning after the new moon with Totosai. Kikyo and Kaede had been informed a few days ago by the messenger Yuno that Inuyasha had been hurt in an assassination attempt, but that his condition was stable, and he would visit them soon.

As the prince and his brother approached, however, Kikyo could sense even from a distance that the situation was far from good, and her dark eyes were clouded with concern as the visitors landed in the heart of the village.

The formal greetings and exchange of gifts concluded, Totosai took it upon himself to fascinate the villagers with his fire tricks and amusing stories, while the brothers took Kikyo and Kaede aside to tell them what had happened. They took out the iron box in which the glass shards extracted from Inuyasha were resting, fused now into one shard, and kept still and inert by the spell Lady Shirakumo had put on them through the amulet. The box itself was secured by a strong barrier.

The account of what had transpired upset the priestesses, and the evil emanating from the shards in the box worried them as they thought about the piece inside the prince that was even more vicious than the ones that had come out. But Inuyasha put on a brave face and told them that he would survive whatever came – they were not to worry, he said.

Kikyo suggested that he visit the great tree with Kaede while she discussed the possible treatment options with Sesshomaru.

He knew it meant that she had words for Sesshomaru that she did not want him to hear, and feared that they would fight. But Sesshomaru nodded to say that it would be all right, so Inuyasha left the hut with Kaede.

Kikyo, now alone with Sesshomaru, sat on her mat with her back against the wall. He sat on a cushion his attendants had laid on the floor of the hut for him.

Although she had behaved with the proper respect towards him in front of all the villagers, and continued to behave with dignity now that they were alone, the expression on her face told him in no uncertain terms how disappointed she was with him.

"My sister and I protected Inuyasha as well as we could, with the few resources we had, for fifty years," she said coldly. "He suffered no lasting harm in all those years. But after living with you for a little more than a month, he has returned to us in mortal danger from a magical shard that was intended for you? How could you allow this to happen?"

She broke off then, seized by a coughing fit. Sesshomaru could smell the illness in her lungs. That, and the scent of her humanity as well as the aura of her priestess' powers all repulsed him, until he remembered that his beloved brother too had been perfectly human in his arms last night. He thought of Inuyasha's scent and his lovable human features, and suddenly the priestess seemed less offensive to him.

Kikyo took a sip of water, collected herself, and knew that she had been too free with her words. She inclined her head to Sesshomaru before saying: "I ask pardon for speaking so disrespectfully to the king of the lands I live in. I spoke thus because I was upset for Inuyasha. I should not have allowed my emotions to rule my speech."

"You need ask no pardon, Priestess," Sesshomaru replied. "You were not wrong to say what you said. It is my fault that Inuyasha's life is in danger. You did protect him very well for fifty years, and you entrusted him to me thinking that I would continue your good work. I have failed."

Kikyo said nothing for many moments, but at last she silently exhaled the resentment she had been holding in, and said quietly: "No, I know very well what Inuyasha is like. He is loving and brave, and protective of those he cares for. You would not have been able to stop him from throwing himself in front of you. I see from the looks in your eyes and his, and from that precious jewellery he wears, that you love him well enough to make him yours. We humans do not understand these things – we do not take our siblings as our husbands or wives, and few of us choose partners of the same sex as ourselves – but I know it is different for demons."

"Our societies are not the same."

"They are not. But Inuyasha is half human, don't forget. You must have shielded him well last night, when there was no moon, and I hope you will do that on every moonless night he lives through."

"I intend to, but times are uncertain, and there are no guarantees that anyone will live. I have always known that from my father, who fell despite all his power and strength, but I had to be reminded of it by a wolf demon two days ago."

"Your words suggest that you intend to face the spider demon who sent the assassin. But who will love and protect Inuyasha if things do not turn out the way you hope they do in your encounter with the enemy?" Kikyo asked. "My sister and I are old. I don't know how much longer we have to live."

"Neither do I, although I can tell you frankly that the scent of blood I detect from your lungs does not bode well for you. Perhaps medication and your priestess powers can help you heal, but what we need to know more urgently is whether you can remove that shard from my brother."

"My sister and I can probably purify it so that it becomes inert and will be unable to respond to its master. But how long we can keep it that way, I do not know. The magic I feel from the object inside him, and the piece in that iron box, is dark. It has a familiar aura that I had hoped not to sense again."

"A familiar aura?" Sesshomaru asked, remembering what Minister Atsushi had told them. "I must ask if it feels familiar because it reminds you of a particular assault on you by a disguised demon some fifty years ago?"

Kikyo looked startled. "How did you know about that?" she asked. "It was fifty-one years ago, several months before Inuyasha wandered into the forest near our village. A demon disguised in a white baboon pelt tried to rape me. My powers did not seem to work as well against him as they did on other demons, which made me wonder if perhaps he was a half-demon. Fortunately, a power from the great tree shielded me – I could sense the tree's disgust with him for attacking me. I cannot 'hear' the trees as well as Inuyasha can, but I could hear the sacred tree that day. It seemed to be saying that the demon was an abomination. Another demon, a kind one, helped me back to the village after that. I never told Inuyasha about the incident. I didn't want to upset him, especially as he was so conscious about being someone with demon blood living among humans."

"If you find the aura of the shard familiar, then the demon who attacked you and the one who tried to assassinate me must be one and the same. Naraku, the spider lord. He is indeed a half-demon, but an unnatural one, not born of a union between a male and a female."

"If the great tree protected me against him, perhaps it can help Inuyasha," Kikyo said hopefully.

"I would be grateful if you would find out how it can help."

Kikyo got to her feet, only to be doubled over by another violent fit racking her lungs. "Excuse me," she murmured once she got the coughing under control, and went over to a small box on the floor. She opened the box and took out a package bound with string, which when unwrapped proved to hold a fresh batch of medicine in the shape of spherical pills.

Sesshomaru guessed that the priestess must have just finished her last batch of pills, and now needed to unwrap a new lot. Kikyo swallowed one, washed it down with water, and was about to put the pills into a pouch she wore and close the box when she saw something else inside. She paused, reached into the box, and took out what had caught her eye.

It was a necklace of large beads and small fangs, and it emitted a curious aura.

"I'd almost forgotten…" she said softly to herself.

She contemplated the object for some moments before turning to Sesshomaru.

"This necklace is enchanted," she said, looking from the beads in her hand to Sesshomaru's face with a rueful smile on her pale face. "I have never used it. I put a spell on it fifty years ago, soon after Inuyasha came to live with us. I sensed a dangerous demon side to him, and I created this necklace to control him, in case he ever turned against us and destroyed himself. But he was such a kind-hearted boy – gruff and defensive at times, but so good-natured that the villagers quickly came to trust him, and all of us became fond of him. I never had the heart to use the necklace, and I know I never will."

Kikyo put her other hand over the necklace and spoke an incantation that removed the spell from the beads. She then picked up a small knife and severed the thread. The beads and fangs, powerless, scattered over the floor of the hut. She gathered them up, put them back into the box, and turned to Sesshomaru with a look of quiet determination on her face.

"No one can have power over Inuyasha now," she stated firmly. "I have severed the necklace to show that I hold no claim over him – but he needs _your_ love and companionship more than ever, even though he is his own being and must always remain so."

"I understand."

"I hope you do. Now let us see if the tree can help us remove that disgusting object from his body."

…

"What's wrong, Inuyasha?" Kagome asked, looking up at the half-demon as she slipped her tiny hand into his much bigger and more calloused one.

"What do you mean, kid?" he asked, smiling down at her as he pressed his other hand against the bark of the great tree.

"You're not all right," Kagome spoke in the most subdued whisper Inuyasha had ever heard from the lively child.

He looked down into her huge, brown eyes, which were wide and fearful now – fearful for him, thanks to her growing priestess' abilities which made her sensitive to spiritual disturbances.

"It's true – I'm not well," Inuyasha admitted. "But I hope your grand-aunts can help."

"We will do all we can – you know we will," Kaede assured him.

"You're in the right place," Kagome said in a strangely distant manner, as if she was trying to focus on something faraway while continuing to engage in the present conversation.

"What is it, child?" Kaede asked her grand-niece.

"It's…" Kagome murmured. "I don't know… I can hear…"

"The tree," Inuyasha said suddenly. "You can hear the tree. I hear it too."

"It's saying…"

Inuyasha's face hardened as he too registered and gradually began to comprehend the significance of the message from the tree. "It's saying that it drove away the abomination before, and it can do so again."

"Abomi-what?" Kagome asked, not knowing what the word meant, but understanding that it was something bad.

"The tree drove away something evil fifty years ago," Inuyasha said, his eyes turning towards Kaede. "It can drive it away now. That means the demon who attacked Kikyo was…"

"You know about that incident?" Kaede asked.

"I learnt about it very recently."

"My sister never wished to tell you about it," Kaede said. "I don't know how you found out. I was a very small child when it happened, even younger than Kagome is now, so I remember little of it. But I remember the wickedness of the demon, and how he fled in agony when something invisible attacked him in return. Kikyo's powers were not working very well against him, so we knew it was something else, and we sensed that it was the great tree that had helped. Does this mean that the demon who has hurt you was the same…"

"Yes," came Kikyo's voice from several feet away, as she and Sesshomaru approached the tree. "It was the spider-demon lord, Naraku. Lord Sesshomaru and I have only just discovered the same thing, and he has given me a name to put to the evil aura I sensed." Kikyo was holding the iron box, keeping Lady Shirakumo's barrier around it intact.

"You should have told me," Inuyasha said.

"And upset you when you were so self-conscious about being half-demon?" Kikyo countered gently. "Anyway, no one knew who that demon was until today. Telling you would have served no purpose other than to make you angry and sad. But now that we know, it gives us some hope. Perhaps we can purify the shard so that it will not grow sharp, and the great tree can drive it from you. Let us find out what can be done."

They stepped up to the tree, while Sesshomaru kept a respectful distance from the silent, giant being which towered over the village and whose aura was so different from that of demons and priestesses alike. It was unique.

"Come, little one," Kikyo smiled at Kagome. "You have an affinity for communicating with trees too, and your powers grow by the day. You can help us."

"Really?" Kagome said, brightening up for the first time since she had sensed that something was wrong with Inuyasha.

With her grand-aunts and Inuyasha, Kagome put her hands to the bark of the tree and squeezed her eyes shut, hoping to listen more clearly.

The quartet stood around the tree for some time, during which Sesshomaru had to be patient, despite his urgent desire to know what they were hearing.

At last, they opened their eyes and stepped back, before bowing to the tree.

"What did it say?" Sesshomaru asked.

"It says that the priestesses can purify the shard, but to remove it without doing greater harm to me, we have to wait for the right time," Inuyasha said.

"I am not certain that I understand what that right time is," Kaede remarked.

"Neither am I," Kikyo declared.

"It has to wait for the other tree," Kagome said, puzzled, again with the air of repeating something she had heard but did not understand.

All eyes turned to the little girl. "What other tree, Kagome?" Kikyo asked.

"I don't know, Aunt Kikyo," she said, biting her lip, feeling frustrated because she could not grasp the meaning behind the 'words' she had sensed in her mind.

"I sensed something too about another tree, but I didn't get it either," Inuyasha said, stooping down in front of the child and assuring her that it was all right not to understand. "Whatever it is, the time isn't right yet. I guess I'll just have to wait here and see."

Kagome smiled and reached a hand out to touch one of his ears, then remembered that she had not asked permission.

"Go ahead," Inuyasha told her, bending her head so that she could reach the furry appendage.

"At least there is hope," Sesshomaru said, gazing at his brother and the human child.

"So we'll wait?"

" _You_ will wait," the demon lord said.

"What about you?"

"I am going to hunt Naraku down."

…

"Do you have to do this _now_?" Inuyasha snapped.

He and Sesshomaru had gone to the edge of the forest, where they could speak in relative privacy.

"I am unwilling to put all my hopes for a cure for you on one source," Sesshomaru stated. "I believe the magical spell that controls the glass shard is such that if its originator is destroyed, it will have no more power over you, and the shard will dissolve harmlessly inside you. Naraku has done too much harm – I cannot let it pass."

"What about all the advice your ministers gave you?" Inuyasha asked urgently. "They told you it was not wise to wage war against Naraku while he had a hold over us through the revolting thing sitting in my chest, and I totally agree with them!"

"They advised me not to wage _war_ , and they were right," Sesshomaru replied. "It would indeed be unwise for me to risk all my military resources and put all my soldiers' lives in danger by sending them out against someone who could control my decisions based on his threats against you. But I do not intend to wage war – I intend to engage him in single combat."

"And you think you can do that safely, considering that he still has a hold over you through what is happening to me?" Inuyasha demanded angrily, his voice rising.

"I shall kill him before he can move against you," Sesshomaru stated arrogantly.

"Don't be such an ass. It's practically suicide!" the prince yelled, drawing glances from Totosai and the guards and attendants who had accompanied them to the village.

"He tried to kill me and wounded my brother and mate-to-be. It is my _duty_ to do battle with him for my honour and yours."

"That's just your pride talking. If you were using half the sense you have in your head, you would know that this is simply the wrong time."

Sesshomaru did not reply, but he softened in the face of his brother's frantic efforts to prevent him from doing what he felt he must do, as a demon lord and a protective lover.

"Don't upset yourself," he said. "We will continue this discussion later."

"Don't you dare move from here," Inuyasha warned him, before turning back towards the village, leaving Sesshomaru and some of the guards in the forest to protect the perimeter of the settlement. Other guards and the family of demon slayers hired to protect the place patrolled the village itself. Naraku had a nulling stone, after all, and would be able to approach with his aura undetectable by any of the demons, priestesses or slayers. Visual alertness was essential.

Sesshomaru knew that it was unwise to confront Naraku before the shard was removed from Inuyasha. Still, his anger ran deep, and it was only with great self-control that he was able to turn his mind to the matter of how to defend the village while his brother waited in it to learn what the tree and the priestesses could do.

At last, he settled for a sturdy barrier that Kaede and Kikyo put up, one tuned to beings of the same nature as the shard in Inuyasha's chest. It was very thick, and far less subtle than the barrier his mother had put up, however. Those within the barrier would thus know only at the point when something attempted to breach it. That would at least give them warning, but it also dulled their ability to sense other demon auras beyond the barrier. Sesshomaru and the priestesses agreed that it was a sensible compromise, as there was a good chance that Naraku would make further use of the nulling stone, which would make the ability to sense him from a distance pointless.

Sesshomaru and half the guards stayed in the forest outside the barrier; Inuyasha, Totosai and the rest of the guards remained in the village within the barrier.

Late in the night, when Inuyasha was resting in the hut with Kikyo and Kaede, and too occupied with Kikyo's worrying cough and various bodily weaknesses to keep a sharp eye on what was happening out in the forest behind the village, Sesshomaru caught a scent of something on the wind that made his blood boil.

He had barely been able to contain his desire to shatter Naraku into tiny pieces from which he would never regenerate, but had done so through pure discipline and the need not to upset Inuyasha. But what he sensed now caused his anger to swell to a far greater extent than it had before, and at once he abandoned all his self-restraint.

For what he sensed was Naraku at a distance – Naraku within his territories, inside his kingdom. Yet, no alerts had come from the border forces. He knew at once what had happened. The spider lord must have used the nulling stone to shield his presence as he stole across Sesshomaru's border. Once he was deep enough in Sesshomaru's territories for the border patrols not to notice, he must have given the nulling stone to someone else – one of his children, perhaps, and once his helper moved away from him, his own aura would have flared strongly as he let the winds that were currently blowing north carry his scent across this land.

He would do such a thing only because he knew very well that it would be an excellent way to provoke Sesshomaru into facing him.

Of course it was unwise to confront Naraku now. Of course it would be suicidal. But of course he could not let it go.

His rage rising as his determination to face Naraku grew, Sesshomaru began to coldly give orders to his guards and other attendants.

"Yuno," he said to the dog-demon messenger. "If things develop so that it becomes necessary to communicate between the castle and the village, you are to be the one to deliver all communications."

To the captain of the guards with him, he said: "You and six of your guards are to maintain your positions and continue to patrol the forest beyond the village barrier. Alert your prince and the priestesses if anyone attacks the place."

To three guards, he gave these instructions: "Move quietly so as not to wake my godfather Totosai. Go into to the village and stay there. Watch over your prince. Do not tell anyone where I have gone. Only if Totosai questions you about my absence should you tell him that he is to stay with Inuyasha and protect him until I return. All of you are to be especially alert for the mirror demon. Watch for even the tiniest shards around the priestess' hut."

To Isshin, he gave these instructions: "Return to the castle and remain there. Inform my mother that I will be away from both the village and the castle at this time. Do not say why. Tell her that she is to be regent in my absence and the prince's."

Then Sesshomaru mounted his two-headed dragon and took off quietly, vanishing into the night sky which was so poorly lit by a tiny sliver of moon as narrow as the crescent on his brow, that no human or half-demon eye saw him go.


	40. Making Sacrifices

"Kikyo, you promised me you would look after yourself," Inuyasha chided the coughing priestess, whose delicate frame was rocked by the soreness and irritation in her lungs and throat. "How did you allow yourself to get into this state?"

"She _will_ insist on carrying out all her duties, visits to the sick villagers and devotions at the shrine in all kinds of weather," Kaede grumbled to mask her own fear for Kikyo's well-being. "Everyone from the headman down has advised her to take it easy, but no, she walks out in the rain and wind and goes about her work as if it were sunshine all day long."

"I can't leave you to do all the work by yourself," Kikyo told her sister.

"Well, I soon will be doing all the work by myself if you don't get better! Much use you'll be if you're dead!"

"I can help," Kagome said from the doorway.

"What are you doing out of bed at this hour? Does your father know that you left your hut?" Kaede asked, startled to see her grand-niece in the dead of night. "And Sango with you!"

A girl who looked a year older than Kagome was in the doorway too. Inuyasha remembered someone telling him that she was the daughter of the demon slayer family hired to protect the village.

"Come in, both of you," Kikyo said hoarsely. "Don't stand out there in the night wind."

"Oh, _you're_ one to talk!" Kaede muttered as she wrapped a blanket around her sister's shoulders.

"Sango was spending the night in our hut when we heard you coughing, Grand-aunt Kikyo," Kagome said, inching closer to the warmth of the small fire in the brazier. "It sounded bad. We wanted to make sure you were all right."

"Nothing worse than the few nights past, don't worry," the priestess said.

"But I can help do your work," Kagome said, unrolling a spare sleeping mat and burrowing under a large blanket with Sango. "Then you can rest."

"You will be doing my work when I am gone, anyway," Kikyo said with a smile. "For now, let me do all I can."

"Stubborn as ever," Inuyasha snapped.

"As if you're any different," Kikyo retorted gently.

"We also came because we wanted to ask you if we're in any more danger now than we were earlier in the night," Sango spoke up in a gentle but firm voice.

"Why would you think that?" Inuyasha asked the child.

"There are more guards inside the village barrier now," Sango explained.

"Sango is always the first to notice these things," Kagome said, nodding to confirm what her friend had said. "Among us children, I mean."

"Well, I haven't noticed," Inuyasha muttered, realising he had been so worried about Kikyo that he had not been paying much attention to what was going on around the village.

He got up and strolled out of the hut to where Totosai, his cow and three of the smaller dragons were snoozing under a tree. Inuyasha sat beside his godfather quietly while extending the reach of his senses to determine which demons were within the barrier.

The children were right. Three of the demon guards who had been patrolling the forest beyond the barrier were now within the boundaries of the village. Then he tried to determine who was outside the barrier, although its thickness was muting his senses. That was when he realised that while he could very vaguely and lightly sense seven of the castle guards outside, there was nothing of Sesshomaru's presence. Considering that he was more attuned to his brother's aura than that of others, Sesshomaru ought to have been the first one he picked out.

The demon lord was not in the forest.

"Totosai! Wake up!" Inuyasha said urgently, elbowing his godfather in the ribs.

"Wh- who said I was asleep? Huh?" Totosai mumbled.

"Where's Sesshomaru?"

"How would I know, young one?" the fire demon asked, blinking in the darkness as it dawned on him that he too had no sense of Sesshomaru's presence beyond the barrier.

"That stubborn ass!" Inuyasha exclaimed angrily, jumping to his feet. "He's gone off to face Naraku alone!"

"You, guard!" Totosai called to the demon closest to them. "Three of your colleagues were beyond the barrier earlier this evening, but now they are within. Bring one of them to us."

"Yes, Master Totosai," the guard replied, and hurried to find one of the three who had joined them inside the village only a few hours ago.

He soon returned with one, a fox demon who bowed to Totosai and asked what he could do for him.

"Where is Lord Sesshomaru?" Totosai asked.

"Master Totosai, Lord Sesshomaru did not want us to say anything to you until you specifically asked us. He has left. He did not tell us precisely where he was going, but all of us scented the spider lord, Naraku, at a distance just before Lord Sesshomaru departed. He also sent Isshin back to the castle to inform the Lady Shirakumo that he would be away from both the castle and the village at this time. We believe that Lord Sesshomaru must have gone to confront Naraku. He left about an hour ago."

"Naraku is here in these lands?" Inuyasha asked, with a growing sense of dread for Sesshomaru's safety. "Which direction did his scent come from? Did he come over the waters? Which direction did Sesshomaru fly off in?"

"Your Highness, Lord Naraku's scent and waves of his aura were coming from the south. He must have come in across the southern border, using the nulling stone that we were all briefed about after one of its shards was used by the assassin in the castle. Lord Sesshomaru flew south on his dragon."

"If he was using the stone to enter our kingdom, how could his aura flare?" Inuyasha asked. "The stone would have suppressed it."

"He must have given the stone to an aide, or one of his children, and ordered them to leave," Totosai murmured.

"But why would he do that after succeeding in slipping in undetected?" Inuyasha asked, frantic at the idea of Sesshomaru going to face the tricky spider demon who wanted him dead.

"Obviously, he wanted to get Sesshomaru away from you, believing that you would either be too incapacitated to travel, or that Sesshomaru would not permit you to face any more danger," Totosai said.

"But he will put _himself_ in danger?" Inuyasha howled with frustration. "I don't give a shit that he's stronger than Naraku – the bloody spider has a million tricks up his tentacles, and he has _this_ card to play!"

Inuyasha jabbed at his chest, where the glass shard was buried.

"He can't do this alone – I'm going after him!" the prince declared, shedding his outer robe and outer trouser layer hastily and pulling on his fire rat robe, which he had stored in one of the dragons' saddlebags.

"That will put _both_ of you in danger," Totosai said calmly. "Who will run the kingdom then? You are his heir."

"I don't give a rat's ass who his heir is. His mother can do the job. I'm going to get him back."

"If no one can stop him from leaving, then please go with him, Master Totosai," Kikyo's soft voice came from behind them.

Inuyasha turned to see her, with Kaede, Kagome and Sango, standing a little way off, holding a small lantern for light. They had heard his exchange with Totosai and the guard, and come out of the hut to see what the matter was.

"Kikyo, I don't want to leave you at this time…" Inuyasha began.

"I know. Would it be of any use for me to advise you strongly to wait until the shard can be removed from you before you go?"

"There's no time for that. If all goes well, I either won't need the shard removed, or I'll be able to come back here and get it out of me at our leisure. If all goes wrong, then there's nothing more to discuss."

"I understand," Kikyo told him, resigned in the face of his determination and obstinacy. "Your brother and king needs you. We will defend the village, as we always have. Your guards will be here too, I believe?"

"Yes," Inuyasha declared. He turned to give orders to the highest-ranking guard: " _All_ of you are to remain here and protect the village. Naraku is in these lands. If his aura is detectable now, it means that he has handed the nulling stone to someone else, possibly one of his children. That person, or those persons, will now be undetectable to you except by sight and feel – watch out for them."

"Yes, Your Highness."

With that, Inuyasha raced into the forest to get one of the faster dragons to ride, while Totosai mounted his flying cow and soared into the air. Yuno saw him coming and knew that he had learnt of Sesshomaru's departure. Quickly and without a word, the dog-demon messenger handed the prince the reins of the swiftest dragon with them. Inuyasha nodded his thanks, sprang onto the beast, and flew off after Totosai.

"There's no way even this dragon will be faster than Sesshomaru's two-headed beast!" Inuyasha yelled across to his godfather.

"No – Sesshomaru's dragon is the fastest of the lot," Totosai confirmed. "And my cow Momo is already falling behind – you go as fast as you can, I will follow."

"All right!"

Inuyasha urged his mount on, and they flew on through the dark clouds of night.

…

"Naraku!" Sesshomaru roared, leaping off his dragon and descending on the dark form of the spider lord who had trespassed on his lands.

Naraku jumped lightly away and soared to safer ground, out of the immediate reach of the dog demon lord.

"Sesshomaru, how good of you to come at my invitation," Naraku smiled. "And it _was_ an invitation, was it not, allowing you to sense and scent me at just the right time? Do you like the place I have chosen to wait for you to come to me?"

Sesshomaru knew this barren land. He had visited it many years ago, alone, to mourn and rage, for this was where his father had died protecting his human mate and the newborn Inuyasha. But this was not the time to care about where they were.

"I will destroy you for everything you have done to me – all your past offences, your repeated incursions into my territory, and most of all, for the harm you have done my brother!" Sesshomaru growled, turning his eyes from the few remnants and marks that showed where a human mansion had once stood, the place in which Inuyasha's mother had been housed and sheltered after her demon mate took her away from the castle. Humans had from the time of the great battle regarded the area as cursed and haunted by demon ghouls, and had never rebuilt homes or settlements here.

"That was _your_ fault, Sesshomaru," Naraku spat bitterly, his face turning dark in an instant. "If you had given the prince to me, no harm would have come to him. I would have taken very good care of him."

"He does not need what would pass for 'care' from you," Sesshomaru snarled.

"I took every reasonable precaution to safeguard his well-being," Naraku said. "Did _you_?"

With a roar of anger, Sesshomaru flew at Naraku. He had Tenseiga and another sword taken from the armoury, but unknown to his friends, he also had Tokijin with him. He had concealed the aura of Kaijinbo's sword under a barrier so that Totosai would not know it was in his dragon's saddlebag. He knew it was a weakness to resort to Tokijin after promising Totosai that he would put it away, but no sword he had wielded against the mirror demon had stood up to the test, and Tenseiga was too dull a blade to cut flesh and bone. So he had given in to his desire for revenge and secretly retrieved Tokijin from the armoury just before leaving for the village.

He drew Tokijin now and slashed fiercely at Naraku, who extended his numerous tentacles and allowed him to cut away. Every wound released bursts of toxic demon poison. With his other hand, Sesshomaru unleashed his own brand of poison in the form of a long, lashing whip. It cut Naraku repeatedly and burned his skin. But the spider lord had so many demons, spirits and bodies absorbed into his compound being that he easily regenerated any injured part of himself.

He was no warrior like Sesshomaru was – no one could remember ever seeing Naraku lift a sword, spear, staff or bow in his pale hand – but he was a crafty thing, and this was his way of doing battle. He would let his opponents hack at every expendable part of his renewable body until they were either overcome by the toxic fumes spewing from his wounds, or until they tired enough to let him fire yet more tentacles from his body and wrap them inside those appendages so he could assimilate them into his being, make their power his power, and their memories his own.

"I see that I have indeed chosen the right place to face you," Naraku sneered. "You will be no more successful here than your mighty father was in preserving his own life."

"My father succeeded in what he set out to do – to save the lives of the ones he loved – and I shall do no less than him!" Sesshomaru declared, launching another attack on the spider lord.

Naraku was crafty, but Sesshomaru knew better than most how to deal with him. They had clashed before, and Sesshomaru had learnt important lessons from those encounters. The first was to avoid transforming into his full-dog form – enormous as that dog shape was, Naraku had no difficulty twining those slimy, muscled limbs around and around him and holding him in place long enough for Sesshomaru to run the risk that he might be absorbed.

The second was to avoid hacking away pointlessly until he was distracted and blinded by clouds of purple poison fumes, as well as disorientated after flailing at flying tentacles from every direction.

The trick was to accept a few hits while lunging directly at Naraku's primary body. Even that was an easier tactic to talk about than to carry out, for the hits were vicious, and the thick tentacles were no mean obstacle. But Sesshomaru went for it. He ceased fighting with the tips of the tentacles presented to him, soared into the air, and lashed out with his sword, claws and whip. Tentacles battered him and injected their poison into him, but he shot like an arrow towards Naraku's main body, and thrust Tokijin deep into his chest. With the other non-demon sword he had taken from the armoury, he impaled Naraku against a dead tree trunk, pushing the blade right through the point on the spider lord's back from which the tentacles sprang, thus temporarily paralysing the eruption of new appendages.

Tokijin's tip thrust repeatedly into Naraku's body, searching, searching… his heart had to be here somewhere.

"What makes you think I've got my heart with me, Sesshomaru?" Naraku laughed, ignoring the pain of the blade prying his ribs apart.

"I think you've got your heart with you," Sesshomaru grunted. "Because you no longer trust anyone else with it."

Tokijin sliced through more bone and unnatural flesh as it sought Naraku's heart. Sesshomaru's whip slashed Naraku's hands off and fused into a stiff mass of green dog-demon poison the tips of those tentacles which had already been outside Naraku's body before their source was pinned to the tree. Those free tentacles now flew in at him, only to tangle one another up as they melted slowly from the poison. Ironically, they thus formed a bizarre shield for Sesshomaru against other appendages seeking to worm in towards him. The dead tree creaked as Naraku strained to unpin himself from it. The time it would take the spider demon's hands to regrow and for the tentacles to disentangle themselves would be all the time he had to locate Naraku's heart.

"You may have hidden it in different places in the past, and shaped it into different forms," Sesshomaru growled, driving Tokijin downwards. "But I know that ever since your infant, Hakudoshi's twin, turned against you while harbouring your heart, you have kept that vital organ within yourself."

Naraku's eyes widened and glowed with pain as Sesshomaru drove his blade into a new spot. But he smiled at the same time, and bit out these words: "Oh, Sesshomaru… you know, sometimes, having a heart can mean the chance at life as well as it can mean the risk of death. You will remember that I returned Kagura's heart to her moments before I drove my tentacles and my poison through her – I thought it would kill her for good. But as I have recently learnt, she survived, and because she had her heart, she was free of me forever. A double-edged sword, having a heart…"

"Shut up and die," Sesshomaru snarled, carving up new flesh with the steel of his blade.

"Not so fast – having my heart back does mean that there is a chance of your killing me here and now. But it also means that I would go much, much further to keep myself alive now than I used to before, when my body had no heart in it, and I knew that however much you cut me up, whether you hewed my head from my shoulders or tore me to shreds, I would be able to slip away, return to the place where I had stored my heart, and make myself whole again."

"Be silent!" Sesshomaru commanded, clawing Naraku's head open with his talons and tearing his face off his false bones. The lump of flesh with his features on it flew to the ground and lay amidst the other pieces of flesh scattered in a wide radius around them, all writhing and struggling to reform into a proper body.

More toxic fumes. It was getting harder for Sesshomaru to focus on what he was doing. And slashing his head into three parts still did not shut Naraku up, for his face in the dirt began to join up along its torn seams, and the mouth continued to form words: "You were right in a way – I do have my heart with me. But it seems you've miscalculated, my dear Sesshomaru. I took the liberty of concealing my heart in the ground of this barren land. You can't have noticed its scent and aura as you were so focused on attacking me, and from the very first strike, you reduced your chances of ever locating it, for even your powerful nose cannot now pick it out from amongst all the other pieces of my flesh throbbing and pulsing on the ground."

Sesshomaru gave Tokijin another desperate thrust, but there was no heart to be found within. He had been deceived by Naraku's tactics, and had failed again. Tokijin creaked at the resistance from Naraku's ribs, and suddenly broke in half. It was the third sword in seven days that had broken in Sesshomaru's hand – even so powerful a sword as Tokijin…

He quickly burst through the tangled mass of tentacles and escaped Naraku's clutches just as the spider demon regrew his hands and tore free of the dead tree. The armoury sword that had pinned him there fired free of his body and the tree, and Sesshomaru caught it by its hilt as it flew through the air.

"Sesshomaru, oh Sesshomaru," Naraku purred as his face drifted back up to join again with his head, and his injuries closed up. "None of this ever needed to happen. If you had only given Inuyasha to me, you would be spared all this trouble. Inuyasha would be safe, and you would have your old life back."

"Liar," the demon lord stated calmly. "Inuyasha would be at your mercy, and I would be dead. You only want him to get to my throne."

"I exercised that plan only after you rejected me, and humiliated me," Naraku scowled. "I would have been content with the boy. I would have had him bear my children, and let them contest your children for the throne – or better, woo your children, and mate with them. My descendants ruling your lands would have been good enough for me, until I discovered in the course of my visit that you took my daughter, took my slave, and seduced your brother while I was under your roof courting him! That was when you had to die."

"Unfortunately you wounded Inuyasha instead."

"I did not want to do that, but as I have, it is just as well. His life is in my hands. Now I only need you out of the way. It has been amusing playing these games with you, but it is time to end the fun. As you cannot find my heart, all I have to do now is order you to stand back and give Inuyasha to me, or else I shall command the shard inside him to sharpen and grow."

"You are the fool who has miscalculated here," Sesshomaru growled, levelling the point of the armoury sword at Naraku. "If you kill Inuyasha, nothing will stop me from killing you, even if I have to dig up every piece of earth on this land to find your heart. I do not believe that you will kill him."

Sesshomaru took a step towards Naraku, but the spider lord spoke: "Who said anything about _killing_ him?"

Sesshomaru stopped.

"You are quite right to say that I won't kill the boy," Naraku continued. "What good would that do me? Oh dear, no. I'm near enough to him now to control that shard with great precision. So I'll make the shard grow into his spine and sever it, and he will never again be able to stand up on his own two feet, never move without help, never feed himself or wash himself. But he will _live_. And that is all I need once I get my hands on him – a still, compliant body in which to work my magic and plant my seed. He will have my children, and I will plot against you repeatedly until you are dead, and then my children will sit on your throne. And when they are in power, I will have no further need of the prince – if he ever displeases me, he can lie there still and unmoving and starve slowly to death. How long does it take a strong, paralysed half-demon to starve to death, Sesshomaru?"

The demon lord's rage rose, but it was a rage fuelled by the growing awareness of defeat. "For your despicable sins, Naraku, you will die a terrible death one day," he said quietly, gradually coming to a realisation of what he had to do.

"So give me the boy, and I will keep him unharmed and alive, and allow you to live for another few centuries – even another thousand years. What do a thousand years matter to me when you will obediently name the firstborn child that Inuyasha gives me as your heir? I am a chaotic amalgamation of souls, and half the time I barely know _what_ I am. But the children I will have with your brother will focus my countless natures into their beautiful little selves, and through them, I shall perhaps at last find peace."

Sesshomaru remained silent.

"You have few options, Sesshomaru," Naraku said. "I'm doing you a favour, after all. I am relieving you of the burden of being mated to your demanding little brother who has stolen all your heart and will never be happy with your promiscuous ways. Without him, you can continue to rule your kingdom, and sleep with my disowned daughter and your other whores, and know that when you are dead, the seed of your father will still rule your lands, but through Inuyasha and not through you. Come now, you know you could never remain faithful to just one mate. By this, I am offering you a thousand years of freedom."

A cold, calculative part of Sesshomaru's mind told him with crystal clarity that Naraku's proposal made sense. He would be free of the burden of being bound to one high-born mate, free to rule his kingdom and take a female mate who would bear him children who could grow up to challenge Naraku. That calculative part of his mind even reasoned that he would be doing Inuyasha a favour – once Naraku had him, he would have no reason to hurt him further. It would be saving Inuyasha's life and health. No one knew what the future would bring, so perhaps Inuyasha might even die of natural causes before Naraku could implement the second half of his plans for power. And Sesshomaru would certainly not yield the throne to anyone other than his own offspring then…

Yes, it all made sense. Except for one obstacle – an insurmountable obstacle presented not by the cold and calculative part of his mind, but by his heart, which was greater and stronger than everything he had ever been.

The impediment was that the very idea of Inuyasha in Naraku's embrace, at Naraku's mercy, as Naraku's mate, made Sesshomaru want to roar at the heavens and thunder at the gods until they tumbled from their dispassionate perches in the sky. He could not, would not, would _never_ do that to Inuyasha. He would never sacrifice him, not even for the pathetic excuse of saving his life.

He would not allow the priestess' act of severing the enchanted necklace, and her statement that no one could have power over Inuyasha now, to mean nothing. The woman was right: no one could, or should, have power over Inuyasha.

Sesshomaru sensed that at that very moment, the boy was drawing near. The disobedient brat. He knew his lord and brother had given him an order to stay and wait for the great tree sacred to the unfeeling gods to help him, but here he was, rushing after him. An impossible handful, a rebellious child, a mate who would probably be nine-tenths trouble in the future.

Nothing worth keeping, surely?

Except that he loved him as he had never loved anyone in his life.

As Inuyasha came closer and closer to the barren land where he and Naraku stood, Sesshomaru knew that he had to act, and act fast. It was the only way to save the boy.

"Naraku," Sesshomaru said coldly, sheathing his sword and standing before him unarmed. "I have a counter-proposal for you."

"Oh?" the spider lord asked, his garnet eyes flashing with curiosity and greed. "What might that be?"

"Myself."

"What?" Naraku asked suspiciously.

"Take me." It was the bargain he had tried to make with the gods, and they had not listened. So he would now make the same bargain with the being before him who seemed to hold half the devils of the netherworld within him.

" _You_?" Naraku questioned, sharply.

"Yes. Forget Inuyasha. I offer myself to you. Do with me what you please. You can have the throne through me, through any children you compel me to bear you with magic. They can easily supplant Inuyasha's claim to the throne. The claim of my bloodline will be stronger than the claim of my father's bloodline through a younger brother."

Naraku's grasping mind speedily calculated the rewards and drawbacks of this new proposal, and liked what it saw. A long tentacle snaked cautiously towards Sesshomaru, brushed his waist and hips, and caressed his face. When the demon lord did not react, Naraku grew bolder, and pressed his tentacle closer all around him.

"Sesshomaru," Naraku murmured, drawing the dog demon to him. "If you had been agreeable to this from the start, everything would have been so easy."

Inuyasha was in sight now, tearing towards them on his dragon. The demon lord's two-headed beast let out a great cry as he hovered high in the air, spurring his stable-mate on towards their master.

"My only condition is that you leave Inuyasha alone and unharmed," Sesshomaru said.

"With you in my power, I can agree to a small matter like that," Naraku leered.

"Sesshomaru!" Inuyasha yelled as he saw him seized by Naraku's tentacle. "Sesshomaru, no!"

Pressing his dragon on faster as Naraku drew Sesshomaru even closer to him, and seeing his brother unresisting, Inuyasha panicked.

He saw another tentacle of Naraku's snake around the scabbards of the two swords secured to Sesshomaru's sash, pull them free and fling them aside to disarm the demon lord.

"Remember – one false move from you, and pretty little Inuyasha spends the rest of his life as useless as a rag," Naraku warned.

A storm of dust blew into the air as the dragon swooped low over the earth, and Inuyasha jumped to the ground, unsheathing his Tetsusaiga.

"Sesshomaru!" he called again, racing towards his brother and Naraku.

But Naraku held Sesshomaru before him as a shield, and said to Inuyasha: "You're a tempting morsel, little prince, and I still believe that you are destined to be mine one day. But for now, I've been given a better offer."

"What?" Inuyasha shouted, confused. "What's going on?"

"Go home, Inuyasha," Sesshomaru said quietly. "Look after these lands and your people."

"I don't understand!" Inuyasha yelled.

"Your brother is mine," Naraku declared. "Himself in exchange for you. How very much he loves you… but he won't be yours now."

"No, Sesshomaru – please, no," Inuyasha blurted out in fear and anger. "Not you…"

"Yes, him, my prince," Naraku smiled. "And to make certain that neither of you renege on this bargain, I am strengthening the placement of that shard inside you – if you were planning to have it purified by your priestess friends, or to get rid of it by killing my younger daughter, well, let's just say _that_ won't work so well now."

Sesshomaru snarled, but Naraku waved a hand in Inuyasha's direction, and the half-demon prince felt the shard lodge even more securely inside him, if that were possible. It remained rounded and painless, but he felt as if it was now sticking to the flesh of his heart and lungs, and pressing against the bones of his spine, and it began to reek much more strongly of Naraku.

"Inuyasha…" Sesshomaru called, afraid for his brother.

"I'm fine, Sesshomaru. I don't care about me – don't do this – don't let him do this! I'll kill him now!"

The prince charged at Naraku, Tetsusaiga raised. But to his horror, instead of trying to ward him off, Naraku punched a tentacle clean through Sesshomaru's body.

"Sesshomaru! No!" Inuyasha screamed, as Sesshomaru stiffened in shock and surprise and gasped out a mouthful of blood as the toxic appendage impaling him lifted him off the ground, while another limb pinned his arms to his sides. His eyes were open, but his head fell forward, his beautiful silver hair tumbling loose over his shoulders.

"Don't worry, he isn't dead," Naraku laughed. "I wouldn't kill my prize catch. I'm just sending you a clear message that every attempt you make to kill me will only cause your brother further harm. Besides, I need to be sure that he won't try anything funny on the way back to my castle."

"Sesshomaru!" Inuyasha cried helplessly, as Totosai came into view on his cow. Sesshomaru's two-headed dragon sped towards the fire demon, took him and his cow onto its back, and sped them towards Naraku and the dog demons.

Their fire demon godfather sprang off his double-mount, saw what was happening, and directed a thin blast of fire at Naraku's head, careful to avoid Sesshomaru. The spider lord's flesh and hair burned, but he continued to laugh.

"It's useless when I have no heart, old demon," he cackled through the flames, and then, before their horrified eyes, one of his tentacles picked up the armoury sword he had flung to the ground, unsheathed it, and sliced off Sesshomaru's left arm in one clean cut.

The demon lord's eyes widened, and his lips parted, but the pain was so great that no words or cries issued from his mouth.

Totosai, enraged, took aim with his swordsmith's mallet, but Inuyasha saw another tentacle poised to pierce Sesshomaru again, and stopped his godfather. No more pain – he could not stand it if Sesshomaru was hurt again.

"You learn reasonably fast," Naraku smiled from a terrifying face burnt red and black.

"Inu… yasha…" Sesshomaru whispered, finding his voice at last. " _Go!_ "

Naraku rose into the air then, and faster than the two on the ground could do anything about, all the pieces of his hacked-off flesh lying in the dirt also soared into the sky, whirling around him and Sesshomaru. Among them was his heart, which had been buried under the soil. But by the time Totosai and Inuyasha realised how he had hidden it amongst the other pieces of his false body, it was too late.

Naraku was gone, and Sesshomaru with him.


	41. Parting

"This is an evil day," Kikyo said quietly to Kaede as Kagome and Sango slept close by. "I can feel it."

"Don't speak so ominously," Kaede returned.

"But I sense that it is so. Now that I know the demon that attacked me fifty-one years ago is the same one trying to destroy Inuyasha and Lord Sesshomaru and seize these lands, I know that eliminating those glass shards, and their maker, is a task I was destined to face. We cannot allow someone like Naraku to gain power in these lands."

"No, we cannot. So we will do what we can to be rid of him and those who belong to him – which makes this a good day, does it not?" Kaede commented optimistically.

Kikyo smiled, but in her eyes was the conviction that this was an evil day dawning. "Well, the sun will be rising soon," she said. "I'll go to the shrine first. You watch that shard in the iron box. You can take over my work later in the day."

She left the hut to go about her morning duties, coughing lightly as she went.

...

Her aura and scent concealed by the nulling stone, Kanna floated towards the village of the tree sacred to the gods.

Naraku had not specifically ordered her to come, but he had handed her the nulling stone and given her no further instructions, only telling her to leave with the stone when the wind rose so that Sesshomaru would sense him.

Free to do as she pleased, Kanna did what came instinctively to her. She turned east towards the village, drawn by the glass splinters from her magic mirror. She could hear the shard they had merged into calling and crying, even when no one else could, sealed as it was by her father's amulet spell and the powerful magic of the great dog demoness of the Far West. She travelled close to the ground, under the cover of the forests, and when she was halfway to the village, Lord Sesshomaru even passed her as he flew out on his dragon to confront her father. But he was far overhead in the sky, and never knew that she was there on the ground, moving in the opposite direction.

In the deep forest, she waited and watched. It would not be easy to enter the village, not with that sturdy barrier put up by such powerful priestesses, and with so many guards around and in the human settlement, watching their surroundings intently. The great tree, too, at the heart of the village, emanated a dangerous energy which she recalled her father making vague, angry references to.

But she did not need to enter, or get past the barrier. She only needed to get a little bit closer.

She bided her time until she saw the prince, Inuyasha, hurry out of the village on a dragon, along with the powerful fire demon on his flying cow.

She waited some more until the guards had reorganised themselves following the prince's departure. She watched their new patterns of patrol and learnt the rhythm of all their steps.

Then she made her move.

Once the guard watching over the section of forest in her direct line of sight passed her, she moved swiftly and noiselessly towards the edge of the barrier.

The aura of the great tree was stronger now. It made her uncomfortable. However, she was determined to retrieve the glass that belonged to her mirror. She floated for cover behind a thickly growing shrub, and stood there unmoving until the guard passed by again in the other direction before raising her mirror and pointing it towards the hut which she sensed was housing the shard.

…

Kaede stared at the iron box as the object inside it began to rattle aggressively. She tried to reinforce the barrier around the container, but the barrier was intact – it was only that something was agitating the shard. Its master, and the main body of glass from which it had come, must be very close by. Such proximity of what it would naturally seek to return to would be as strong as the force of the barrier.

At once, she woke Kagome and Sango and ordered them back to her nephew's hut. Then she began to move slowly towards the door.

"Kikyo!" she shouted for her sister.

Kikyo and several castle guards appeared in the doorway at almost the same moment that Kaede called, for the older priestess had already been alerted by the angry aura of the sacred tree, and by the agitation she had sensed from the shard inside the hut.

"Get behind me!" she told Kaede and the guards. She drew an arrow, pulled back the string of her bow, and pointed it at the box. No use firing yet, for the power of one of her arrows would succeed only in breaking the dog demoness' barrier before it would home in on the shard.

What was bringing the glass to life when it had been so still before this? Naraku, or one of his people, had to be close by with the intention of getting the shard back, and must have commanded it to fly to them.

"A spider demon must be here, near the village – probably the small female one that Inuyasha told us about," Kikyo whispered to her sister. "It must be using the nulling stone to conceal its presence. Look for it, and get rid of it. Take the king's guards with you."

"Let _them_ deal with it," Kaede answered. "I can't leave you alone with this."

"I can handle it," Kikyo said firmly. "The guards are demons themselves – they won't be able to purify another demon, and if this one does not keep its heart with it, they won't be able to kill it. You have to be with them."

Kaede hesitated.

"Just _go_ ," Kikyo ordered. "I can handle this. The sooner the demon leaves or is destroyed, the quieter the shard will grow, so be quick about it."

Kaede obeyed. She hurried as fast as her old legs would carry her to the edge of the village, taking two of the guards with her and leaving one with Kikyo. The unwelcome visitor was emitting no aura that her priestess' powers could sense, but at least the guards who had come with her were alerting those beyond the barrier, and starting to search intensively for a sign of a scentless intruder with no spiritual aura.

How long would it take to comb the entire perimeter of the barrier, searching for someone they could only use their eyes to detect?

…

Kanna was running out of time. The guards closest to where she was were speaking to one another in urgent tones, and they would soon see her if they kept searching every inch of ground like that.

She intensified the power of her mirror, and was gratified to feel the imprisoned shard respond from where it was.

A little more… just a little more… and there it was, free of its shackles.

…

The shard burst out of the iron box and struggled to penetrate the Lady Shirakumo's barrier. That barrier was very powerful, but the proximity of its mistress and her mirror exerted a naturally and immensely strong pull, so it fought through, and at last it was out.

Kikyo released her arrow just as the shard emerged from the barrier. Although she was on target, the glass wriggled loose from its cell just as the arrow hit. As the point of the arrow touched the very tip of the shard and started to purify it, something else happened.

At Kanna's command, the tiny shard grew into a towering mirror demon, like the one which had attacked Sesshomaru and fired part of itself into Inuyasha.

Its spurt of growth into something so massive limited the damage done by Kikyo's arrow. Only its right arm was withered and useless. The rest of it was intact. As Kikyo watched, the demon stared down coldly at its wasted arm, from which the purifying power was starting to spread, and severed that arm from its body with a blade it grew from its left hand.

The discarded arm fell to the ground, where it turned to ashes as it was completely purified. Kanna would never get back that part of her mirror, but as the priestess was to learn, the female demon was determined to recover all that she could.

The mirror creature then grew another arm from what remained of its body, and turned towards the priestess as she released another arrow from her bow. Swiftly, its enormous bulk swept the arrow away, taking care to hit it only along its shaft, and not to touch the tip where the spiritual power was concentrated.

But as it attempted to sweep the priestess aside too, thinking that such a fragile old human could surely be broken in two as easily as a stick of wood, it was surprised to find that it could not touch her without being burnt by the same kind of power that had wasted its arm.

It grunted, then stepped towards her again, commanded by its mistress to ignore the superficial burns and get past the dangerous human quickly. As it obeyed, however, and threw Kikyo and the castle guard aside, burning itself badly in the process, it was assailed by a blow of power from the great tree in the village.

Physical assaults meant nothing to it, and it would hardly feel them as its heartless mirror flesh reformed and healed over and over again – but spiritual attacks were different. The demon roared with a pain that was channelled back to Kanna. Outside the village, the small demon girl doubled over from the force of the counter-attack.

But then she straightened her little body through sheer force of will and further intensified the call of her mirror.

Inside the hut, the mirror demon heard the call, stared at the priestess lying on the floor, and saw that she was already struggling to her feet. As it prepared to face her again, the other guards still inside the village, and the demon slayers, surrounded the hut and shouted angrily at the mirror creature.

The head of the family of slayers, Sango's father, burst through the doorway and hurled a great blade at the demon. The blade sliced the demon in two, but because it was a thing with no heart, it could not be harmed that way. Even before its two halves could slide apart, they began to reconnect.

The demon guard with Kikyo scooped her up, raced out of the hut, and left her under the great tree in the care of Kagome and Sango. Kagome's father, Kikyo's nephew, ran to his aunt. Together with his wife, he tried to help her to a hut where her injuries could be tended to.

But Kikyo refused. "No!" she cried, although the pain she felt from her side told her that some of her ribs were broken. "I must get rid of that thing!"

"Aunt Kikyo, please – please don't fight that creature any more – let the slayers deal with it," Kagome's father advised.

"The slayers and the guards can't purify it!" she insisted, struggling to her feet, using her bow for support. "If I can purify it completely, some damage will also be done to the demon which controls it!"

Before she could move towards her hut again, the humble structure of wood was shattered before her eyes, by the mirror demon breaking out of it like a tiger from a small cage. The slayers and guards leaped out of the mess after their quarry.

Sango's uncle, father and mother – a feisty woman whose figure was just beginning to show that she was carrying her second child – hacked and sliced at their massive opponent alongside the castle guards. But like Sesshomaru and Inuyasha before them, they learnt that whatever damage they did was not permanent.

Kikyo attempted to fire an arrow, but the pain from her ribs was too great for her to be sure of shooting accurately. She would risk hitting the slayers and guards instead. Kagome could purify the creature too, but the child was still too small to handle the bow.

"Come on, Kaede!" Kikyo muttered under her breath. If the source of the problem could be dealt with, this demon would disappear. Even the shard inside Inuyasha might be rendered harmless – although that was not certain, as Naraku and not the ghost-like girl child that Inuyasha had told them about was the one in ultimate control.

…

Kanna could wait no longer. A minute more, and she would be discovered. Issuing a strong command to the mirror demon to come to her immediately, she began to make her way out of her hiding place.

"There you are," came a voice to her left.

The other priestess of this village, a stout old woman, was standing there, arrow pointed in her direction.

Priestesses' arrows were dangerous. They could not be easily absorbed by her magic mirror like so many other things could be, for they had a purifying power which could do her and her weapon great damage.

But _this_ priestess, Kanna could sense, was not nearly as spiritually powerful as the one doing battle with her shard-grown demon inside the village. Perhaps she could risk it…

As Sesshomaru's guards closed in, Kanna pointed her mirror at them and spoke a command that began to incapacitate them by drawing out their spirit energies. The guards stumbled, and Kaede quickly fired her arrow at Kanna.

Kanna risked her mirror by using it to deflect the sacred arrow, which flew aside and lodged harmlessly in a tree. She sprang into the air and soared above the trees, using the leaves and branches to block her from the view of the demons and the human on the ground.

The demon guards also took to the air once they recovered, but by then Kanna had gone a distance and dived back among the leaves and branches. They would have to start their hunt for her all over again.

…

Kanna had miscalculated. It was true that the stout priestess was not as powerful as the other one, but her powers were still considerable. The mirror was damaged where it had touched the sacred arrow as it deflected it, and the damage was spreading.

It was not beyond repair, however. If the shard still outside the main body of the mirror could return to it more powerful than it had left, it could heal a great deal of the damage, and the mirror could be renewed.

Kanna had originally wanted only to call the shard back to her and command it to get past the priestess in the village, but she now changed the purpose of her mission. If her mirror demon could kill one of the priestesses and absorb her powers, it could increase its strength and repair not only the damage to its arm, but also to the mirror itself. These two priestesses were not easy to kill, though.

Ah… but there was another one. A little one. A small priestess who would be much, much easier to contaminate, kill, then absorb. Very powerful, as Kanna's senses told her, and as her now-clouded mirror showed her. A girl-child whose spiritual powers were great indeed, possibly greater than those of the old one in the village.

…

The mirror demon suddenly swept the slayers and guards aside and turned right around from the direction it had been heading in before. It had been trying to leave the village, but now, it was charging towards Kikyo.

Once again, getting closer to the great tree hurt the approaching demon. It held back, in obvious discomfort. Still, the absence of a heart in its body meant that however great the pain, it would tolerate it, as long as its mistress could stand it. It lurched forward.

Kikyo stood up straight in front of her nephew, his wife, Kagome and Sango, under the great tree. She fitted an arrow to her bow and drew it, ignoring the pain in her side. Now that the slayers and guards were not between her and the mirror demon, she could chance it.

She fired, but the demon deflected the arrow again, ignoring the burn where the arrowhead seared its glassy flesh. Before she could draw another arrow from her quiver, the demon swept towards her and knocked her aside – then stretched out a large open hand in Kagome's direction.

Kagome screamed and dived away as the huge glassy hand pounded into the ground where she had been standing a second ago. Her father clung to the demon's fist, but was only thrown painfully aside as the creature went for Kagome again.

Sango threw a dagger at the mirror demon, grabbed her friend's arm, and fled through the village with the demon in pursuit.

The huts and scattering villagers got in the way, and Kikyo could not let loose another arrow.

"Look out!" she screamed at the children as the mirror demon tried to cut them off from the left.

Sango's father sprang onto his fire-cat mount and sped after the mirror demon. He swooped in front of it, leaned down and scooped up both girls in his arms, then circled in a wide arc back towards the great tree, which the mirror demon seemed to be trying to avoid. On the fire cat now, Sango scrambled behind her father, faced backwards and threw several poisoned darts at the demon. They hissed and burned, but hardly slowed it down.

"Give me some darts that haven't been coated in poison!" Kagome said to the two slayers.

Sango's father whipped three out from his belt and handed them carefully to the child. Kagome grasped them, imbued them with her priestess' powers, and crawled round Sango's father to the rump of the fire cat.

She hurled the darts at the demon, and this time it roared and its glassy flesh registered severe burns.

Out in the forest, Kanna gasped in pain, and her mirror smoked. _Kill that child now!_ she commanded the demon.

Extending its mighty arm, the mirror demon knocked the fire cat out of the air, sending her riders flying against the base of the great tree.

Sango's father cushioned the fall for the children, but that was all he had time for as the demon closed in on Kagome.

With a cry of fury, Kikyo launched herself at the mirror demon, one arrow grasped in her right hand, and took the brunt of its fist driving in hard for the child. She cried out in pain, but did not hesitate to stab the demon's arm with her arrow, sending the head deep into its strange flesh.

The mirror demon shrieked and flew away into the forest, crashing painfully through the thick barrier the priestesses had erected around the village.

…

The instant Kikyo sent her arrow deep into the mirror demon, Kanna stiffened and toppled from the high branch she had chosen to hide on, like a stunned bird dropping out of a tree.

Sesshomaru's guards saw the white figure plummeting earthwards, and raced to the spot with Kaede panting and puffing in their wake.

"Don't be fooled by her appearance, Lady Priestess," the highest-ranking soldier among them told Kaede. "She may look like a child, but she is a mature demon."

"I know that," Kaede said grimly, drawing her bow.

But in the next second, the mirror demon barrelled through the barrier, and the forest filled with the scent and demon aura unique to Naraku's family. The mirror being sprang between its mistress and her enemies, and shielded her from them.

Some of the guards here had been among those who had battled the other mirror demon in the castle, and knew what they were up against. Despite the injuries that this one seemed to have sustained from the sacred arrows and darts, it was still huge and powerful.

Bracing themselves for more punishment, the guards darted and flew in at Kanna, but her bodyguard battered them and stood its ground, even as it raised one large foot and aimed it at the priestess Kaede.

"Stop that!" an angry voice called from above them as blades of wind drove the mirror demon back from Kaede. "Kanna, stop!"

Kagura floated to the forest floor on her feather, jumped off it and tucked it into her hair.

"Kanna, you have gone far enough – stop this at once!" she ordered, standing between her sister and the others. "I love you best of all our family, but if you don't stop, I won't hold back!"

"Lady Kagura," the guards acknowledged her, recognising her as Lord Sesshomaru's friend, who had helped to save the prince's life.

" _Please_ ," Kagura said urgently, seeing the cold look in her sister's dark eyes, and the way her hands clutched her mirror determinedly. "Please don't do this – I know you have your heart with you, so you can be destroyed. Please don't make me destroy you!"

"I can't stop this," Kanna replied in her whisper of a voice.

"You _can_. I did."

"I was never like you," the girl whispered.

"Kanna, I'm _begging_ you!" Kagura cried.

"I've missed you, Kagura," the girl said, as she raised her mirror to trap her elder sister's soul.

Kagura unfurled her fan and raised a sharp wind that drove back the magic mirror's stealing powers. The huge mirror demon aimed a blow at her, but in another smooth move, she released a burst of jagged-edged wind blades which ripped through the demon's body and briefly held it back.

"This is your last warning!" Kagura hissed.

"I'm sorry, Sister," the girl whispered, and aimed her mirror again.

Kagura's next volley of wind blades was fired at Kanna, who gasped as the blades tore through her. Her little body cracked and crumbled like broken glass at the same time as her mirror shattered, and the mirror demon turned to dust.

"Kanna…" Kagura whispered, gutted by both sadness and anger as the sibling she was closest to died.

She reached out a hand to touch the glassy dust, but all the shards of the mirror were melting away into nothing, and the mirror demon was no more.

Along with them, Kanna's remains evaporated into the forest air, turning back into the nothingness she had been made from.

…

"I hurried here as soon as Lord Sesshomaru's attendant returned to the castle and gave his message to Lady Shirakumo that her son would be delayed. I knew at once that he had decided to confront my father, and that there would be trouble!" Kagura said bitterly as she hurried towards the village with Kaede and the guards.

The barrier had been momentarily torn by the mirror demon breaking through, but it had reformed.

"I will let down the barrier so that you can pass," Kaede said.

Once she did that, they all smelt the scent of terror, anger and death in the village.

"Oh no…" Kaede gasped, running past the many huts and down the winding village lanes towards the great tree under which her sister lay.

Kagura held back as she drew close to the heart of the village. She sensed the power of the great tree testing her, feeling her Naraku-like aura, and scanning her soul. She held out on her open palm the nulling stone she had taken from her sister's body, as if to convey to the tree the message that all she had with her was open to view, and it was not her intention to hide anything. The blue stone was whole now, for Kagura had pressed the shard used by the first mirror demon back into the rest of the orb, which took it back and made itself smooth and round again. She told the tree in whatever way she knew how that she meant no harm, and gradually felt the intimidating spiritual threat recede.

She then hurried forward and saw an old priestess, so delicate of form that she seemed quite unearthly, bloodied and battered under the tree. A child was kneeling beside her, hugging her and crying bitterly over and over: "Grand-aunt Kikyo! No!"

The priestess was hardly breathing.

"Please let me see if I can help," Kagura said gently, motioning the humans back.

She stirred up a gentle but concentrated breeze, which carefully lifted the priestess Kikyo off the ground without further disarranging any of her broken bones, and moved her slowly to a nearby hut, in which the villagers quickly set out a sleeping mat for her to lie on.

"I am no healer, but I know the patterns of the wounds inflicted by Kanna's attacks," Kagura told Kaede. "Her mirror creatures can inflict narrow but deep wounds with every blow. These injuries on her body will have shattered her ribs and tunnelled far into her lungs."

"I will try to stop the bleeding," Kaede said grimly. "Kagome, help me."

They worked to keep Kikyo alive. But that was all they could do, and as the hours passed, they knew that they were losing her.

…

Inuyasha could think of nothing else after seeing Sesshomaru seized, wounded and abducted by Naraku than to hasten back to the village, get the disgusting shard out of his body by any means necessary, then go after Naraku and save his brother. He could not find Sesshomaru's severed arm – it seemed to have been taken away in the whirlwind into which he and Naraku had disappeared – but he snatched up the Tenseiga and armoury sword, mounted Sesshomaru's two-headed dragon, and flew north-east at top speed. Totosai followed on the other dragon, while his cow tailed them at her more sedate pace.

But as they approached the village, Inuyasha's nose told him at once that something had gone horribly, horribly wrong in his absence.

His worst fears were confirmed when he rushed into the heart of the village to find Kikyo's hut destroyed and all the villagers clustered around another hut, in which the priestess lay dying.

"Kikyo!" Inuyasha cried, pushing past the villagers and throwing himself to the ground beside her. "Kikyo… no…"

"I'm sorry, Your Highness," Kagura apologised. "I got here too late to stop Kanna."

"Forgive us, Your Highness," the captain of the guards also said, kneeling before him and pressing his forehead to the floor. "We failed to prevent this."

"Grand-aunt Kikyo got hurt saving me!" Kagome wailed, raising a face soaked with tears for only a second before she bowed her forehead to Kikyo's arm again.

"You're worth it," Kikyo whispered breathlessly to the child. "Don't cry… be a good priestess."

"No, it wasn't anyone else's fault," Inuyasha murmured numbly. "It was my fault. I should never have brought myself or that glass shard here..."

"It was _my_ decision to face this threat," Kikyo breathed as fiercely as her wounded lungs would let her. "I would _never_ allow the abomination that tried to violate me fifty-one years ago to take control of this kingdom. Never. Your brother has his faults, but he has been a good ruler."

Kagura and Totosai ushered the villagers away from the hut, posted the guards outside it, and stood at a respectful distance to give Kaede, Kagome, the child's parents, and Inuyasha some privacy during Kikyo's last moments.

"Kikyo, I shouldn't have left the village at this time," Inuyasha cried, the tears filling his golden eyes.

"It was meant to be," Kikyo whispered, slipping her hand into Inuyasha's. "Your brother…"

"Naraku's got him, but I will get him back. Don't think about that now. You have to heal."

"I won't be healing from this one, Inuyasha," she said sadly.

Kaede sobbed and Kagome buried her face in her mother's lap.

"The shard inside you hasn't dissolved despite the demon girl's destruction," Kikyo murmured. "It _should_ have. Can't I let you out of my sight for even a few hours?"

She smiled in an effort at humour.

"Naraku reinforced its strength," Inuyasha muttered. "He still has ultimate control over it, even if his younger daughter and her mirror are gone. But stop worrying about everyone else besides yourself. You're strong, Kikyo – you can get through this – you _have_ to get through this!"

Totosai's demon hearing picked up the words spoken in the hut, and he stepped back indoors to say quietly: "Tenseiga may be able to revive the priestess. I never told Sesshomaru, but his sword is meant to sever spirit and not flesh – at times, it has the ability and the willingness to destroy the spirits who come to take a soul to the other world, and in doing so, it may revive the person the soul belongs to. Although it is intended to be wielded for such purposes only by Sesshomaru…"

Inuyasha's eyes brightened, and he glanced eagerly at the Tenseiga which was now in his sheath beside its brother-sword. But Kikyo's fingers tightened around his hand, and she said: "No, Inuyasha. My time has come. I sense that it is so. Even if you have a magical sword that can revive me, don't do it. Let me go. Let me rest. I've lived long enough for a human…"

"Kikyo, please!" Inuyasha begged.

"I want peace," Kikyo stated.

Those words had many layers of meanings, and her family and friends around her understood that she meant to pass away gently, so that her spirit might remain a peaceful one, and she also wished to have quiet around her as she departed this world.

Kagome stopped crying and held her sobs in as she sat up and gazed quietly at her grand-aunt. Kaede wiped her tears away and held her sister's other hand, the one not held by Inuyasha.

"Look after yourself, Sister, and protect this village as we always have."

"You know I will," Kaede assured her.

"Kagome, grow strong and brave, and never, never lose the kindness of your heart."

"Yes, Grand-aunt Kikyo," Kagome answered in a voice that was shaky from crying, but softly determined.

"My nephew, care for your wife and our family. Your aunts have no descendants, but you do, and perhaps by the time Kagome grows to be a woman, priestesses will be powerful enough to marry and still not lose their powers."

"Yes, Aunt. We will do all we can," Kagome's father replied, bowing to the dying woman.

"Inuyasha…" Kikyo whispered. "Perhaps in another life, when you are old and I am young, we might be more to each other. But for this life, I am deeply honoured to have had you as my dearest friend."

"Kikyo, please don't die!" Inuyasha wept.

But Kaede said softly to him: "Don't weep so, Inuyasha. If you cry so hard, her soul will not be at peace, for it will be bound to this world out of concern for you."

Inuyasha remembered one of his human aunts saying much the same thing to him – except in a much harsher and far more spiteful tone – when his mother had lain dying of old age. He had held in his tears the best he could then, although it was very hard, for he was a small child losing the only person in all the world who loved him.

He tried now to dry his tears and give Kikyo the peace she wanted.

"You will live a long and happy life, my dearest friend," the priestess said with a gentle smile. "My soul will be at rest, but my spirit and all my love will always be with you, like your mother's spirit and her love. Always."

 _You will live a long and happy life._ That was just like what Sesshomaru had said to him the day they had returned from the town. _Sesshomaru…_ Inuyasha felt the pain in his heart as he thought of Sesshomaru, bleeding and torn, in Naraku's hands. All for the sake of saving him.

"I'll do what I can to live as long as I can. And I will defend these lands and the people, and I'll make this village even stronger, so don't you worry," he said firmly, clinging to her hand.

"I know you will," she said, her breathing becoming more laboured as her lungs fought uselessly against their wounds. "Remember me."

"Always," he whispered, his tears starting again as she closed her eyes for the last time and her fingers went limp in his grasp.

She was slipping into unconsciousness now. She breathed on for quite some time, but so lightly that only Inuyasha could hear the slow, shallow inhalations. At last, even the very shallowest breaths ceased. Although Inuyasha tried to remain still and let her go quietly, he could not stand doing nothing. He jumped to his feet, unsheathed the Tenseiga, and held it out in front of him, not knowing how it was supposed to sever the spirits of the netherworld which came to take human souls away.

"I don't see anything!" he said frantically, casting a glance over his shoulder at Totosai. "How does this work?"

"Young one, put that away," Totosai sighed. "If you see nothing, then it is not meant to work, or perhaps you are not meant to wield it."

"Let my sister go, Inuyasha," Kaede advised gently. "She let you go; you must do the same for her."

Kaede spoke cryptically of the enchanted beads that Inuyasha never knew existed, but she did not fear being questioned by him about what she meant, for the truth was that Kikyo had let Inuyasha go in so many ways – she had not clung to him in her youth, knowing that her ageing would far outstrip his maturing; she had let him be his own person, never seeking to confine him to her idea of what a half-demon ought to be; and she had let him go again when Sesshomaru proved that he had changed and that he loved his brother.

Inuyasha felt as if his entire world had fallen apart. Sesshomaru gone, and Kikyo dead... what did he have left?

Defeated by Tenseiga's lack of cooperation and his inability to see the spirits of the netherworld, Inuyasha sheathed the sword and dropped to his knees beside Kikyo's body. He bowed deeply to her, who had been his benefactor, champion and protector for so long, then he left the hut to grieve in private in the high branches of the great tree.


	42. Waiting Impatiently

Kikyo's funeral pyre lit up the sky that night. Her family, the villagers who had always honoured her for her goodness and her powers, the visiting demons, and Inuyasha paid their last respects to her, standing or kneeling around the pyre until the fire had died.

Kaede gathered her ashes into an urn, and buried it beside the shrine in the morning.

She felt the loss of her elder sister profoundly, but everything that needed to be said between them had long been said, and Kikyo had lived a full life. The younger of the two priestesses was determined to look ahead and continue her good work.

Inuyasha was the person Kikyo had most often felt concern for, because someone who belonged to neither of his two worlds would always have a harder life than a person who had a place in one. But now that he seemed to be making his way in both demon and human societies, with a good future ahead of him, Kaede told herself that she would be damned if she would let that go to waste by leaving alone the threat of the shard inside him.

So when she had completed the rites and finished her prayers the day after Kikyo's funeral, she took Kagome by the hand and strode up to Inuyasha, who was still moping in the tree.

"Come down, Inuyasha," she called up to the red-clad figure with a firmness in her voice that he recognised as a warning that he would not be left alone until she was satisfied. "Let's get that accursed shard out of you."

"How?" he snapped. "Naraku's made it worse. Whatever the great tree was waiting for, it's probably not good enough to work against the shard by now, under these circumstances."

"Don't be so sure. We won't know till we try again."

She stood there stubbornly until he jumped lightly to the ground.

"Look at the state of you," she grumbled, peering into his weary eyes, golden irises dulled by fatigue and grief. "My sister would not want to see you like this."

Turning to the tree, she pressed her palms to its massive trunk, motioning to Inuyasha and Kagome to do the same. Inuyasha scowled at what he thought of as her unfounded optimism, but the aura of the tree comforted him, and he did as he was told.

"Tell me if you hear anything, child," Kaede said to Kagome, whose eyes were closed, concentrating on the messages from the tree.

After a while, Kagome said: "I hear… I think it's time… I think the other tree…"

"The other tree has come," boomed a low, firm voice from the ground beneath their feet, making Kaede and Kagome jump backwards in fright.

Inuyasha gasped: " _You?_ "

"Is that any way to greet your godfather?" Bokusen'o rumbled. A thick root emerged from the soil, and a smaller version of the tree demon's face appeared at its base, close to the soil, while its tip waved in the air.

"Wh- what on earth are you doing out here?" Inuyasha demanded in amazement. "Or should I say, one of your roots…?"

"The moment I learnt that you had been wounded by the glass shard, I began to extend and send one of my roots deep under the earth in the direction of this village," Bokusen'o explained. "I knew that powers such as those I sensed from the leaf of this tree which you once gave me were the kind that could purify such shards, unlike demon powers. But I did not want to raise hopes unnecessarily, so I decided to find out for myself without telling you anything."

"Is that why you've been looking so tired of late?" Inuyasha asked, relieved to learn that there was a reason for his tree-demon godfather's fatigue. He did not want to lose another loved one.

"Yes. It is hard work sending a root through so many miles of earth at my age. I have been communicating through the soil with this holy tree for several days now. We have both learnt that while its powers, combined with priestess powers, can purify the shard for a time, only I can physically remove it from you without doing you too much damage. So you see, we had to wait for each other – I could not have removed the shard from you without my demon aura provoking it to flare, while the holy tree could only purify it but not remove it. We had to be in the same place with you, at the same time, so that its spiritual energy could blend with and hide my demon energy. I believe that Naraku does not know that tree demons exist, so his shard is less likely to react strongly to me, especially if my aura is disguised by that of a sacred tree."

"Well, if we'd only known that earlier, I could have just uprooted you and flown you over by dragon!" Inuyasha exclaimed.

"But we _didn't_ know," Bokusen'o said sensibly. "Besides, it would not have worked that way, because I needed time to sound out this tree, to carefully twine this root of mine around its roots, and for our powers to gradually merge. That is not the sort of thing that can be done in a day or two."

"So let's get started already!" Inuyasha said impatiently. "I've got to get this thing out of me so that I can go get Sesshomaru! Naraku has him, and he's badly hurt."

"I have learnt that fact from the tree, which communicated to me what it sensed from your thoughts," Bokusen'o said soberly. "There is a new problem, however."

"Now what?" Inuyasha asked worriedly.

"Naraku has reinforced the positioning of the shard in you in such a way that I am now unable to remove it from you without causing you to lose a lot of blood – and that was what brought you so close to death only a few days ago. It would be an enormous risk to put you through that all over again."

"I'll survive. Get on with it, please!" Inuyasha begged.

"Another difficulty is that you have lost your powerful priestess friend, who was protected by the sacred tree for so many years. Although her death _may_ have sped things along in a way, because I sense that a benevolent spirit has helped me to finally get my powers in step with the sacred tree's, we could have done with her physical presence too. I do not know if the other priestess and the little one are up to the task."

"I can try," Kagome said boldly, stepping out from behind Kaede. Her eyes were still puffy from having cried so hard over Kikyo, but she was determined not to let her grand-aunt down. "I may be small and untrained, but just because I'm small doesn't mean I'm useless, Mr Tree. Grand-aunt Kikyo always said I had more natural power than she did at my age. Grand-aunt Kaede can guide me. She's pretty strong herself, and is very experienced and very careful."

Smiling as he heard the child call his godfather "Mr Tree", Inuyasha said to her: "You have a brave heart, and a kind nature. I believe your powers can help the trees. My tree-demon godfather, Bokusen'o, knows what he is doing, and he will direct us all."

"I will," Bokusen'o assured. "Give me a while more, however – I requested the lady's presence, and she is almost here."

"You asked Lady Shirakumo…?" Inuyasha murmured, as he grew aware of her approach.

Within minutes, the lady in question descended from the sky in the shape of an enormous white dog, Natsumi clinging to her back. As she touched the earth, she transformed into her two-legged shape, looking so splendid in her magnificent robes that all the villagers clustered round them to stare at the demoness who looked so much like the king who ruled their lands.

"My lady? And Natsumi?" Inuyasha gasped. "Lady Shirakumo, if you're here, who the hell is looking after the castle and the kingdom?"

"Oh please," she sniffed dismissively. "Ministers Atsushi and Ryota make very good stewards. They can run things quite as well as Sesshomaru can, except that they are too humble to put themselves forward. And they are trustworthy, so I have no fear of returning to find my son's throne usurped by those old dogs. Perhaps I should say 'your throne' now, as I hear that my careless son has foolishly allowed himself to be seized by Naraku."

"And I will get him back AS SOON as everyone around here who knows how gets this BLASTED shard out of me!" Inuyasha yelled furiously, startling the villagers and making Bokusen'o and Lady Shirakumo laugh.

"Patience, young one," the lady said sweetly. "I had a conversation with Bokusen'o in the forest patch this morning, and flew here as soon as I understood what was happening. How silly of you to wish to proceed without me. Would it not make sense to have a powerful healer and practitioner of magic close at hand, so that she can close the wounds and silence the shard once it is outside your body? Your attendant insisted on accompanying me. I agreed because I found her such a sensible and devoted helper while you were recovering from your wounds. Totosai, be an old darling and move all those curious humans away. You and Kagura had better keep them amused in another part of this… quaint… little village, so they won't distract us all. Guards, block off everyone else's access to this area apart from the priestesses, and ourselves."

Once they were left in relative privacy, Inuyasha prepared himself. He removed his upper robes and stood bare-bodied before the great tree. Natsumi waited quietly, standing to one side until the time came for her to tend to the wounds that Bokusen'o would have to open up in order to get the shard out.

"Sit down with your back to the great tree," Bokusen'o instructed.

Inuyasha sat cross-legged on the ground, facing outwards.

"My lady, would you please cleanse the tip of this root with your powers so that no elements of soil or dirt on it will infect the prince?" the tree demon asked. He narrowed the very tip of his root to a needle-fine point, and Sesshomaru's mother used her magic to cleanse it of every speck of physical grime, so that it would be perfectly clean and safe for Inuyasha.

"Priestesses, please take your places, one on either side of Inuyasha, and hold his arms to help keep him still, while directing your powers of purification towards the shard, _without_ purifying his demonic nature along with it. Child, do you know how to do that?"

"Yes I do," Kagome answered Bokusen'o. "I've learnt that much from my grand-aunts."

"Good. Now I must work with this sacred tree, and time things perfectly, so that the very moment that the shard is paralysed by the power of the tree and the priestesses, I can push my root into you, with my aura shielded by the tree's, and draw out the shard," Bokusen'o said. "Only a careful tree root, which can grow into the finest of spaces yet break the strongest stone, can do this without injuring you more than necessary. It is even more dangerous than it would have been before, as the shard is now stuck to your heart and one lung, and sits very close to your spine – but as I said, only a tree root can do it, and only a _demon_ tree root can do it quickly enough."

"Understood," Inuyasha said, holding himself perfectly still, bracing himself for the pain that he knew would come. But he also knew that this would be a good pain, inflicted on him by his godfather, and for a good purpose. He could stand it as long as he knew it would work.

Bokusen'o focused for a few minutes to get himself in tune with the progression of the sacred tree's release of power. When the moment was right, he moved the tip of his root to within an inch of Inuyasha's back, to one side of his spine. With demon-swiftness that enabled it to penetrate Inuyasha's flesh and muscle while keeping the pain to a minimum, the fine root-tip pierced the prince's back like a long needle.

Inuyasha grunted, but it was bearable.

"Now this will hurt more, but you must put up with it," Bokusen'o warned.

Deep inside Inuyasha, the root-tip which had entered him as rigid as a needle of steel now softened and became pliable enough to gently probe the confined, delicate space around the shard. The probing itself did not hurt, as Bokusen'o took care not to touch Inuyasha's organs or bones, but it began to grow uncomfortable as the root-tip twined carefully around and around the spherical piece of glass, and started to tease it from the prince's heart and left lung.

The entry point on Inuyasha's back began to bleed as Bokusen'o patiently moved his root about in an attempt to unstick the shard without tearing open Inuyasha's heart and lung. More soreness and bleeding were provoked within the cavity of his chest as the movements of the root-tip disturbed muscle and the outer walls of the half-demon's heart. As the sacred tree and the priestesses began to feel the shard attempting to waken itself against the stupor that their purification had put it into, they redoubled their efforts to keep the glass quiet.

"Forgive me for the pain and blood, young one," the tree demon said.

"It's okay," Inuyasha said, gritting his teeth. "I'm fine."

"Almost…" Bokusen'o said softly.

Something made two tiny squelching sounds inside Inuyasha as the glass was carefully peeled loose from his heart, then his lung, taking thin layers of the organs' outer walls with it, then moved with infinite care around the column of the spine.

"The purification can contain it only for a few seconds more, Ancient Speaking Tree," Kaede warned. "Please hurry."

"Almost there," Bokusen'o murmured, negotiating the manoeuvring of the shard around the half-demon's spine before quickly tugging it out of his body, just as it sharpened and grew. The sharp points cut Inuyasha's flesh and made him bleed alarmingly, but the damage was relatively superficial, and he was otherwise unharmed. His heart and lung were intact, and his spine was untouched.

"Quickly, my lady!" Bokusen'o said as the shard struggled in the grip of his root and threatened to either grow into a full-sized demon, or fire itself into another body.

Lady Shirakumo seized the shard and cast a powerful barrier around it. As it began to dart angrily back and forth within the barrier, wearing it down and trying to break through, she took Naraku's gold amulet and spent many minutes casting a spell over the shard. While she worked on the piece of glass, Natsumi pressed clean cloths firmly to the wound in the flesh of Inuyasha's back to staunch the bleeding.

At last, Lady Shirakumo put the paralysed shard down on the ground before Kaede and Kagome and said to them: "Priestesses, it is time to destroy this forever."

Kaede and Kagome did not need telling twice. They uttered their holy chants and purified the shard, then Kagome drove the tip of a sacred arrow into the glass, making it disintegrate into nothing.

"Now it is time to help your wounds to heal, young one," the lady informed Inuyasha.

"It's fine – they'll close up in no time," Inuyasha said, getting to his feet and looking only too ready to jump onto a dragon and beat the life out of Naraku. "Thank you, Godfather Bokusen'o. Thank you, Kaede and Kagome. Thank you, my lady. I am grateful for everything that all of you have done for me. I must leave now."

"Not so fast," Bokusen'o boomed. "The spider lord has taken one of my godsons. I will not have another lost to him through haste. Let the lady heal you, or I shall wrap my root around your ankle and hold you to the ground until you are ready to face the enemy."

"Listen to your tree godfather," Kaede advised him. "Let us use my nephew's hut – he and his wife are praying at the shrine today, so the place will be quiet for the next few hours."

…

"It is done," Lady Shirakumo announced when she had stopped the internal and external bleeding, checked that the wounds affected only his flesh and muscle and not his bones, and that the tears on the outer surfaces of his heart and lung were superficial. She applied a touch of magic to speed up the healing.

"Normally, speeding up healing through magic of this kind can leave scars and tighten flesh. But the tears on your heart and lung are very tiny, and this should leave no permanent negative effects."

"So can I go?" Inuyasha asked, pulling his inner shirt and fire-rat jacket back on with Natsumi's help.

"Not yet. The hole on your back may be a small wound, but it is of course deep, and you must give it another hour to close up completely. Remember that the outer wall of your heart is slightly torn; give the magic time to help it heal properly. Now lie down on your front so that you won't disturb the wound on your back further."

Inuyasha sighed. He ached for Sesshomaru, but he knew that the lady and Bokusen'o were wise in asking him to be patient. After all, it was Sesshomaru's impatience which had done him in this time.

So he waited, lying face-down, while the lady sat cross-legged on a mat beside him.

"Even if you don't get my son back, the kingdom will not be directionless," Lady Shirakumo said to him quietly, when she had dismissed Natsumi. Kaede too had left, and they were alone in the hut. "You will rule wisely, I know, and the ministers and I will be your advisors."

"I _will_ get him back. Don't think I won't," Inuyasha growled, resting his chin on his forearms.

"Anything can happen," she said philosophically. "When your father was in trouble, I offered my help, but he declined. I thoughtlessly left it at that, thinking him more than strong enough to deal with anything. I expected to hear from him soon, a cheerful letter to say that he was healing from the battle and that his human lady and their child were well. But I never heard from him again."

"Well, it will be different with me and Sesshomaru. I'll get him back, and _he'll_ rule. I have no interest in ruling anything other than myself, anyway."

"You _should_ be interested. You have the right to rule not only your brother's lands in his absence, but perhaps even mine," Lady Shirakumo remarked.

"Huh? What do you mean?" he asked, turning his head to look up at her. "I'm not _your_ descendant."

"No, but your bloodline outranks mine, did you know that?" she smiled. "Didn't you ever wonder why your brother is considered a higher-ranking king than so many of the other monarchs on this continent and even its neighbouring continents, despite the fact that your kingdom is such a young one?"

"I can't say that it ever occurred to me to think about that sort of stuff," Inuyasha murmured. "Too busy surviving, you know."

"Well, it's time you thought about it. Millennia ago, your great-grandfather was the only child born to the lord of the dog demon kingdom I now rule over. He came from an ancient and noble line, superior to that of many other monarchs. His father, who was brother to my great-great-grandfather, died while he was still quite young, and he succeeded him. However, he quickly grew dissatisfied with the small territory he ruled – not on his own behalf, but for his descendants, whom he believed would have strength and greatness enough to rule empires. So he gave the crown and the throne to his first cousin, my great-grandfather, and set off with his mate and many dog demons loyal to him for these vast, lawless lands east of where our tribe originated. He claimed the piece of land on which Sesshomaru's castle now stands, and defended it fiercely until no bandits, warlords or petty rulers of princedoms dared touch him or his. His son, your grandfather, was born in these lands. Under his direction, the territory ruled by the dog demons expanded, and they built almost the entire castle you see today. Then your father, with an ambition that far exceeded the dreams of his grandfather, conquered the lawless territories one after another and seized them all for himself, expanding his kingdom to the west so that its borders almost touched those of his ancestral homeland, to the east until he reached the sea, to the north up to the wintry mountains where the bears dwell, and to the south until he was at the border of the territories controlled by the spider and demon-bird tribes. Then he stopped."

"And then he courted you?" Inuyasha asked, intrigued by this new angle of his family's history which Sesshomaru had touched on before.

"Yes. He decided that it would be good to reinforce his bonds with the original kingdom, and I caught his eye as the only heir to my father's throne."

"I'm sure you caught his eye for more reasons than that!" Inuyasha grinned.

"Oh, a compliment from you!" Lady Shirakumo exclaimed, with mock surprise and genuine delight. "What a charmer you are! Do you know, if you don't get Sesshomaru back, _I'll_ take you as my mate and give you children!"

Inuyasha yelped as her fingers pinched his bottom, which she must have found ever so temptingly presented as he was lying on his belly. "Hey! Watch it!" he snapped. "And stop talking about 'if I don't get Sesshomaru back'. I told you I will!"

"Of course you will."

" _So…_ as you were saying, my old man courted you. What made you accept him?"

"I agreed to be his mate because he was strong and handsome, and a good king. In our family, we refer to him as my cousin, but he should really be my uncle, as he belongs to the generation before mine. We didn't get along despite our initial attraction to each other, but at least some good came of it – Sesshomaru was born. And some good came of our severing our mating bond as well, as it meant he was then free to take your mother as his next first mate, and to have you as his second son. So you hail from a proud and noble line, and your father's direct ancestors had a greater right to the throne of my kingdom than mine did. That is why I say that you may even have a claim to my throne – although I should warn you that I won't give it up without a fight."

"Well, I don't want it. I'm not interested in being king of this or that – I'll leave that to Sesshomaru," he declared. "Do you know, though, if my mother's family had their lands seized by my father too, while he was expanding his kingdom? She never spoke of it."

"I do not know much about your mother. But your father wrote to me occasionally, and once, he mentioned that your mother's ancestors ruled human kingdoms when they lived across the sea, near the dragons' territories. I believe it was an internal war that ousted your mother's direct ancestors from their home. They retained some of their titles and some influence with their noble relations on this continent, but their power was gone by the time your father embarked on enlarging his territory. I am not certain how he first met your mother, but one of his letters alluded to a battle – perhaps some other demon had seized her for food, and your father decided to save her. I don't know."

"Speaking of getting eaten…" Inuyasha began cautiously, remembering what Sesshomaru had said about his mother consuming humans in her dog form. "I want a promise from you that you will never, _ever_ eat me, no matter what."

Lady Shirakumo's pretty golden eyes widened. "Eat you? Of course I would never eat you, precious little one. Unless you mean 'eat' to stand for some _other_ activities, of course…"

"Eat simply means eat!" Inuyasha quickly and firmly stated. "It doesn't mean anything else!"

"Pity. Very well, I promise that I shall never eat you, as long as 'eat' really means just what it means."

"Even if you think it means something else too, you'd better promise never to do it," he warned.

"Now _that_ , I can't promise," she replied, making him howl again as her fingers once more made their way over to his bottom.

"Hey!" he protested. "What's wrong with you? Aren't you worried about Sesshomaru at all?"

"There is nothing wrong with me," the lady sniffed haughtily. "I _am_ concerned about my son, but until we get him back, nothing is achieved by worrying about him. What happens happens. It is the way I have always looked at the world."

"No wonder Sesshomaru grew up so resentful," Inuyasha muttered.

"And _strong_ ," Lady Shirakumo countered. "He had to survive in a world harsher than the one we know today. I gave him everything he needed to not only make it through alive, but to thrive."

"Well, he's not doing so well now, and it's all my fault," he answered unhappily.

"He will do as well as he must, without sacrificing the one he loves. It is not your fault. It was his choice. He will do what he must do, and you will do what you must do. It only remains to be seen if you will both survive this latest development."

We will," Inuyasha said. "We _have_ to."

…

An hour later, Inuyasha was ready to go. He imagined himself charging off alone to rescue his brother, but his friends were not about to let him go on his own, as he quickly learnt when he went out to the great tree and prepared to mount Sesshomaru's two-headed dragon.

Kagura was the first to step forward. "I will go with you," she said firmly. "I know the way better than anyone else here, and I am familiar with the layout, defences and labyrinths of the castle too, provided little has changed since I left."

"I shall go with you also, Your Highness," Natsumi said, much more softly but just as firmly. "I know the inside of the castle very well – you may need the help of more than one demon to locate Lord Sesshomaru in that maze."

"Natsumi," Inuyasha said. "I'm not letting you go back to that hell-hole."

"Even if I have to cling to the tail of your dragon as it flies off, I will go," the racoon demon said determinedly. "Minister Atsushi is not the only one I owe my life to. I also owe my survival to the Lady Kagura, and I would not be where I am today without Lord Sesshomaru. So I will not sit by quietly while he is in danger, when this is one situation I _know_ I can help you in."

"I, of course, am going," Lady Shirakumo stated in a manner which brooked no refusal. "It is my son who is in the spider lord's hands."

"All right, all right," Inuyasha said, putting his hands up before Totosai and the guards too could chime in. "We have destroyed the glass shard, and Kanna is also gone. So the threat of more attacks by mirror demons is over. However, I need all the guards to stay here and protect the village in case of any other attacks we weren't expecting. We can't all fly off to Naraku's castle and leave this place undefended while things remain so uncertain. We've already lost Kikyo – I don't want to lose anyone else here to another surprise attack by another one of Naraku's people. Yuno is to go back to the castle to tell Ministers Atsushi and Ryota what is happening. All the other castle guards will remain here to keep the village safe alongside the demon slayers. Lady Shirakumo, Totosai, Kagura and Natsumi will accompany me."

The guards bowed and promised to defend the villagers with their lives.

"Godfather Bokusen'o," Inuyasha addressed the face on the root of his tree-demon guardian. "Thank you for all you have done, and all the effort you have expended to save me. I hope you will rest and recover now."

"I will," Bokusen'o assured him. "Go and find Sesshomaru."

Then the villagers, with Kaede and Kagome at their head, bade Inuyasha and his demon companions goodbye, blessing their journey and mission with good wishes, as they soared skywards.


	43. Tricks And Traps

Naraku congratulated himself on the bargain he had struck. True, the beautiful half-demon prince he wanted was not in his arms, but the demon lord he had previously been so attracted to was now in his clutches.

Looking upon the stump of Sesshomaru's left arm and the bloodstains that severing the limb had left all over those white robes excited him, for Onigumo had greatly loved the act of mutilating others, and a vestige of his dark soul continued to provoke in Naraku a fascination for blood, wounds, carefully made cuts and missing appendages.

Sesshomaru was as good as unconscious – necessarily rendered so by Naraku's spells – for he remained highly dangerous despite agreeing to take Inuyasha's place. He had come quietly enough, but upon being locked into the chamber which was designed to weaken and contain its prisoner, the dog demon had slashed off one of the spider lord's tentacles when he stretched one out possessively and snaked it between his legs.

"I see you're not ready to be fully receptive to me, despite so freely offering to bear my children earlier," Naraku had murmured thoughtfully, allowing the fumes which spewed from his severed appendage to daze Sesshomaru further. "It doesn't matter. There will be time, and you will soon be keen enough."

Naraku then unleashed the full power of the chamber's spells, and Sesshomaru slumped to the ground, his great spill of silver hair fanning out around him. The spider lord issued a magical command from across the room, causing the dog demon's remaining arm to be clasped in a cuff of magical steel and secured by a length of chain to the wall nearest him, while a double ring clapped around his beautiful, elegant throat and held his head to the floor by a shorter chain.

Only when that was done did Naraku dare to approach again and look deep into the brilliant golden eyes which directed a fierce glare at him through lids struggling to stay open, expressing the revulsion felt by the immobile snowy-white body they belonged to.

"There will be lots of time for us to get to know each other very well, Sesshomaru," Naraku whispered, his multiple limbs disrobing the demon lord, stroking and caressing his skin as they pleased, examining the gaping wound that ran clean through the centre of his body where the tentacle had punched through him, molesting him till he provoked a shiver from him that was all the more exciting because it was an uncontrolled response.

But when he attempted to go further with Sesshomaru than merely touch him, a strange aura surrounding the dog demon lord prevented any form of penetration or further infliction of physical injury, burning Naraku's fingers and tentacle tips fiercely.

"This was not part of our agreement," the spider lord hissed angrily, only to realise that Sesshomaru was scarcely conscious, and could not possibly be working magical spells.

Cautiously, the spider lord examined the aura of the powers protecting the dog demon, and took a step back when he found it familiar, so very much like… the spiritual signature of the priestess he had once desired.

How was she doing this? Surely she did not have such power as to imbue a demon with protection from so far away? Her abilities must be far-ranging indeed – as if no longer bound by a physical body.

Naraku examined the strange spiritual resistance further, and concluded that he could overcome it with a little more study and a little more time.

For now, he had to be content with merely touching Sesshomaru, which he did at his leisure. When at last he was satisfied with his exploration of his new toy, he withdrew his tentacles and hands, stood over the dog demon, and smiled, repeating: "There will be so very much time for doing so very much more. I shall leave you to rest for now. You must be exhausted after losing an arm and sustaining such an injury – I can see the floor right through that hole in your belly. I trust that your powers will heal those wounds eventually. The spells will keep you weak, so the healing may take longer than you are used to. But before I go…"

Naraku produced Sesshomaru's severed arm, which he had borne back here within his own body, and laid it on the floor before Sesshomaru's eyes.

"Let _this_ be a reminder to you of how weak you are now."

He spoke another dark magical command, and in an instant, Sesshomaru's arm was consumed in unnatural flames, burnt to a cinder, and lost forever.

"Let that remind you that all of you is mine, and I can do whatever I want with any part of you," Naraku sneered.

The spider lord left the chamber, sealing the door behind him with another spell, leaving Sesshomaru half-dead in body on the floor, barely physically conscious, but burning with rage in his mind. The lord of the dog demons swore that if he could know for certain that Inuyasha was free from the threat of the shard, he would tear himself out of these chains and destroy Naraku slowly and painfully.

But for now, he was left alone to fear for his brother's safety, and for himself. He wanted to roar that none of this should have happened. However, a part of his conscience which blazed strongly with a sense of justice prompted him to think: _It_ _is only right that I should lose a limb, for it matches the anguish within me of losing you, Inuyasha. Was what I just went through anything close to how you felt in the days when you hated me and I forced myself on you? Does all the blood I have shed compare with your suffering when the shard splintered inside you? You forgave my misdeeds and suffered so much pain on my behalf. I can now do the same for you._

Before he lost consciousness, his last thought was: _Stay safe. Don't come for me. This is nothing more than I have deserved._

…

Kagura led the way south towards the border on her magical feather craft. They gathered that Naraku had taken some other way home, for there was no trace of his scent or Sesshomaru's lingering in the air from the moment they passed the place where they had disappeared.

They landed in that barren space for a while, to try and discover how he might have departed. After all, without the nulling stone, he and Sesshomaru would have been detectable to the border guards the moment he attempted to move from one land to another. Yet, no reports had come from the border defences.

Kagura sent out her senses like feelers to examine the area, and found at last a clue in the quality of the air above them.

"That's it – he used a magical portal," she said. "I can feel the familiar traces of his magic up in the air. We don't know how long he and Kanna stood here before he sent her away with the nulling stone and baited Lord Sesshomaru. He could have had all the time in the world to set up a portal that would connect with an exit point back at his castle. He used to do that when I was still with him – he would first create one end of a portal at home, and then go somewhere else and form the other end just in case he needed a quick escape route."

"I don't suppose it's still open for us to use?" Inuyasha asked hopefully.

"No – he would have made certain that it could be used only once," Kagura replied, recalling the tactics her father had used in the past.

"So it'll be the long way then – no problem at all," Inuyasha stated resolutely.

"None of that should ever have happened here," Totosai murmured to Inuyasha. "Here, in the place where you were born."

"And the place where my father died," the prince said. "But I'll be damned if I let this be the place where my brother was lost forever. We're going to get him back no matter what."

He mounted his dragon again and took to the skies with his companions, continuing their flight south.

Lady Shirakumo was in her dog form, slowing her pace to follow Kagura's lead. In that shape, she was an enormous canine demon-beast as large as a dragon, with brilliant white fur, an elegant tail, and silky, flowing ears. Her eyes were red and the dark-blue crescent moon marked her brow. If Inuyasha had not known that this was her, he would never have recognised her by sight alone.

He had never seen Sesshomaru in his dog form. His heart ached again, wondering if he ever would. _Please be alive and well, Sesshomaru,_ he silently pleaded with any gods or spirits or good forces that might be listening. _Please… you promised to live a long and happy life with me…_

They pressed on across the southern reaches of the kingdom towards the border. Totosai, with Natsumi seated behind him, had chosen to ride a dragon this time, for his cow's pace would have been no match for the lady, Kagura's feather craft, or the two-headed beast of Sesshomaru's which Inuyasha rode.

The fire demon eyed the back of Inuyasha's head keenly, observing his long silver mane streaming in the wind. The boy looked tense, but determined. Would he be strong enough to face Naraku? Behind Totosai, Natsumi trembled as they drew closer to the southern border, where she had once almost lost her life.

"You were brave to come, pretty one," he turned his head to say to her. "But it's not too late to get off here."

"No," she replied. "I _am_ afraid, but I am determined to do this. This is one thing I _know_ I can help with. It is nothing, after others have done so much for me."

As they approached their own border close to evening, soldiers mounted on fire cats and dragons soared into the air to meet them, recognizing the great dog-demon form of a member of their royal family, and their lord's twin-headed dragon. They had never seen the prince with their own eyes, but had heard of him since his return to the castle. His mane of white hair and resemblance to his father told them at once who he was.

"Did you see and hear nothing yesterday?" Inuyasha asked the commander of the southern fortress, a battle-hardened dog demon. "No scent or sight of Naraku?"

"No, Your Highness," the commander replied. "We have not scented, sensed or seen Naraku since he paid his last official visit twenty-one days ago."

"Keep the border secure. Be prepared for trouble when we make our return journey, in case we are pursued, or the ones we seek flee before us."

"Yes, Your Highness."

Onward they flew across the neutral lands, then entered Naraku's territory as the sun was sinking. Immediately, they were challenged in the air by Naraku's disorganised but vicious border-defence forces.

"Out of our way, or you won't live to regret it!" Inuyasha yelled, his great sword clashing against the weapons of three spider-demon soldiers at once.

"Listen to me!" Kagura shouted at the solders, fending them off with wind blades that she purposely made blunt so that they would not kill. "You know who I am! I am the Lady Kagura! Let us pass and we will give you no trouble!"

But the soldiers ignored her and continued to attack in waves. Inuyasha, seeing the desert-like terrain they were in which held no civilian settlements, knew that he would be able to deal with this problem in a much quicker manner with the technique of his sword that Totosai had taught him to feel and generate, but which he had not been allowed to use yet for fear of destroying innocent lives.

They could not lose any more time if they were to reach Sesshomaru as soon as possible. And they certainly could not leave any of these soldiers alive to report back to Naraku's castle before they themselves got there.

At Inuyasha's command, their little group swooped towards the ground in a wide arc, followed by the spider demon battalion. Inuyasha and his companions then turned unexpectedly in a quick, tight circle to face the bulk of the pursuers.

A few soldiers had not rushed in with the rest of the battalion and were now clashing with Inuyasha's comrades. He left them to deal with these smaller numbers as he focused on the bulk of the battalion before him. These were the ones who would get a taste of his sword's magical ability to smash its own demon energy into the forces of other demon energies in front of it. Totosai had told him that it would then tear asunder those life forces, wiping out all before it in one strike.

He did not hesitate to use that training now. As he sniffed out the point at which the numerous demon energies before him were coming together, he confidently raised his mighty sword and brought it back down in one swing, aiming at the point where the auras met and clashed.

Demonic power shot forth from the blade, the air crackled and split, and the dry earth roared as the force of Inuyasha's blow exploded through the air and even rent the ground, leaving deep gashes and cracks across a mile of barren landscape.

The prince gasped as the life forces of the spider-demon soldiers disintegrated, and their bodies were shredded. Severed limbs and tatters of flesh rained back down to earth as the sword roared its delight at dispatching so many opponents with one blow – something it had not done in two hundred years.

The only soldiers still alive were those who had not been in front of Inuyasha, and these were swiftly seen to by the rest of the prince's group. Totosai got rid of two soldiers at once with a swift sweep of his swordsmith's mallet, then turned to his younger godson, who was staring in disbelief at the carnage his blade had wreaked.

"Now do you see why your brother and I would not let you do this anywhere near the castle?" Totosai asked, putting a wrinkled hand on his shoulder. "You would have killed everyone in it!"

On another occasion, Inuyasha would have paused for longer, regretted the lives he had taken, and pondered the destructiveness of the weapon he wielded. But he was entirely focused on rescuing Sesshomaru, so he only nodded soberly and sheathed the blade, and they flew on.

As the stars came out, they reached Naraku's castle complex. Its structure was surprisingly elegant, Inuyasha thought – a symmetrical collection of buildings interlinked by open walkways leading up to a gray, looming stone fortress with turrets capping the spindly towers which stood at the ends of the numerous wings.

"Look out!" Kagura called sharply, as demon arrows and spears whistled through the air from the hands of alert guards on patrol.

The battle-trained dragons dodged the missiles even before their riders commanded them to, while Kagura and Lady Shirakumo were too nimble to be caught off-guard by such attacks.

"There's no time to waste – leave them to me!" Kagura shouted.

"Are you sure you can handle them alone?" Inuyasha asked.

"I'm sure – my wind blades can kill an army and then manipulate the dead to fight _for_ me. Take the nulling stone for further protection. Now go! I'll cover you as you enter – Natsumi will have to lead you through the castle!"

Inuyasha caught the blue crystal Kagura tossed to him and slipped it inside his robes while Natsumi made a careful jump from the back of Totosai's dragon onto Inuyasha's. The prince steadied his attendant and settled her behind him, then urged his dragon to dive steeply into the castle compound while Kagura cleared the way for them with a barrage of wind blades which stopped every missile dead in its flight, and killed a quarter of the guards on duty at that end of the compound.

"That way, Your Highness," Natsumi urged, clinging to Inuyasha's sash with one hand while pointing with the other towards a tower on the eastern point of the fortress. "That tower gives access to the main buildings of the fortress – some of the others lead to dead ends, or only take you back outside."

"Got that," Inuyasha confirmed, tightening the left leash of the two-headed dragon to make it turn to the east. Lady Shirakumo flew past them and stayed ahead to shield them from possible attacks, while Totosai took up the rear to guard their backs.

As they swung in the direction of the eastern tower, they caught a glimpse of Kagura controlling the dead soldiers with her fan and its magical winds, turning them against their living comrades, and using their bodies as shields for herself. By now, Naraku had to know they were here.

When they drew level with the tower they wanted, Inuyasha grabbed Natsumi and sprang powerfully off his dragon's back, soaring through the air and flying cleanly through a narrow window near the top of the tower. Totosai followed more clumsily, while the lady transformed into her two-legged shape as she flew elegantly through the opening.

Inside the narrow column of gray stone, Inuyasha lifted his nose to the air and sniffed. "I can't scent Sesshomaru at all," he murmured.

"If he is being held behind certain kinds of magical barriers, you won't be able to sense him," Lady Shirakumo explained.

"Come this way," Natsumi whispered, running towards a flight of spiral stairs. "It leads to a dungeon Naraku always used to keep his prisoners of war in until he was ready to do what he wanted with them. Lord Sesshomaru may not be there, but it is the first place we ought to check."

Natsumi wanted to take the lead, but Inuyasha had no intention of letting her be the first to encounter the sharp end of a sword waiting to greet them.

"Stay behind me!" he ordered. "Just tell me which way to turn whenever we come to a fork."

They raced down the spiral stairs, booted feet tapping lightly against the cold stone.

"Get off the stairs at the second landing!" Natsumi called.

From the landing, they sped down a closed passageway and down another flight of stairs. The nulling stone shielded all their scents and auras as long as the others stayed close to Inuyasha, but their thankfulness that they would not immediately be set upon by every spider demon in the castle did not allow them to be complacent. Inuyasha remained alert, and it was a good thing too, for a small group of spider-demon guards came upon them at the bottom of that second flight of stairs.

Lady Shirakumo dispatched three of them with a poison whip lashing from her claw-tips, exactly like Sesshomaru's. Inuyasha saw off the other four with the Tetsusaiga, and Totosai protected Natsumi.

"Use this for self-defence," Inuyasha said, untying Sesshomaru's armoury sword from his sash and giving it to Natsumi. "You're not battle-trained, but at least you'll have a weapon in your hands."

He had brought both the Tenseiga and armoury sword with him, trusting that he would find Sesshomaru and rescue him, and give him back his blades so he could use them himself. The broken Tokijin had, on Totosai's advice, been left lying in the dirt at the place where Sesshomaru had been taken.

They proceeded more cautiously down the corridor, then down another, at the end of which was another clump of guards, looking nervous as word was going round at lightning speed that the intruders were inside the castle, but no one could tell where they were.

Inuyasha swept all the guards aside with a blow of the Tetsusaiga, and the lady silenced them forever by slicing their heads off their necks with her whip. They had been guarding the dungeon door, which Inuyasha now kicked down, only to find that it held no prisoners of war. Only a few slaves were chained to the walls, and Totosai unshackled them in seconds with quick blows of his swordsmith's tools.

While Lady Shirakumo stood guard at the entrance, Natsumi addressed the frightened, ragged group of demons to reassure them. "I used to be a slave here, like you," she explained quickly. "I escaped and have remained free since then, just as you have the chance to do now. But we need your help – tell us if you saw or heard any prisoners brought into the castle the day before."

One thin, malnourished-looking mountain-cat demon said softly: "I _saw_ nothing, but I was working in a chamber of the north wing yesterday, and I felt a powerful aura within the castle, very close to where I was. I had never felt a demon aura like it before."

"Was that aura still in the north wing when you were moved to the dungeon?" Natsumi asked.

"Yes," the slave replied.

"Thank you," Natsumi said. "All of you must try to leave safely, the best you can, and find your way home. Do not under any circumstances get in the way of the wind demoness who is dealing with the castle guards, or she will kill you along with them. The closest and safest exit I can think of for you is the window on the first floor, one flight up and two corridors down the left – quickly now!"

The slaves bowed their thanks, fled the dungeon, and disappeared up the nearest flight of stairs.

"The north wing is where Naraku's private rooms are," Natsumi said when the slaves had gone. "At least it is where they were when I was here all those years ago."

Inuyasha growled to think of Sesshomaru at Naraku's mercy in his rooms. The spider lord used magic liberally, and he would have worked all manner of spells to keep Sesshomaru weak and quiet.

"Let's go," he said with quiet determination.

…

Naraku had snarled with rage to see, hear and sense the assault on the borders of his castle complex. The auras and scents fluctuated – first he had detected the dominant spirit energies of the prince, the old fire demon, and a very powerful female. Then suddenly, all those energies were masked in seconds, while that of his disowned daughter flared fiercely, seemingly out of nowhere.

That was when he knew that the nulling stone had fallen into the hands of his enemies, and that his younger daughter Kanna was dead, or incapacitated, or won over by her sister.

With a cry of fury, he gave orders for all his castle guards to hunt down and trap the intruders in one of the many magical cells and dungeons all about the fortress. Taking Byakuya and Hakudoshi with him, he slammed and barred door after door behind him as he moved towards the north wing, sealing their passage with the strongest spells he could use in a hurry.

Now in the room where he had chained Sesshomaru, he stilled himself and tried to work out what was happening in the fortress. The nulling stone was shielding its users, but his sense of hearing alerted him to clashing blades and sounds of battle here and there.

He tried to sense the presence of the glass shard but could not. Although its aura was masked, it was a part of himself, so at such close range, he would be able to tell, by trying to control it and move it, if it was responding. But when he gave it a mental nudge, he had no sense whatsoever of it.

Impossible. He had sealed that shard even more strongly to himself, so that it could not be removed by the priestesses or the sacred tree of the village. There was no way in the world that Kikyo and her sister, or the powers of the tree, would have been able to push that shard out of Inuyasha without killing or permanently maiming the boy.

Yet, he had sensed Inuyasha's strength and scent at the outskirts of the complex, just before it all vanished under the concealment of the nulling stone. No shard. The shard was gone from the boy.

"We were supposed to have had _time!_ " Naraku scowled at the seemingly half-conscious Sesshomaru, who stared at him out of hooded eyes he could not read. "Damn the inefficiency of Kanna's mirror pieces – if she isn't already dead I'll wring her skinny little neck myself! Useless daughter!"

But Kanna was out of his reach, in more ways than he knew for certain, so he could only listen and wait, and hope that the intruders would stumble into one of the traps.

…

"Watch out for the floor traps," Natsumi whispered. "This fortress is littered with them. Step on one and we'll be many feet underground in multi-walled chambers that will take the longest time to break out of."

"I'll just use the Tetsusaiga to tear the place down if that happens," Inuyasha said.

"And bring down the entire weight of the walls, floors and roofs above us to bury us alive?" Totosai warbled, alarmed. "Use your brain, young one! I can't believe you wanted to do this alone – we would never have seen you again!"

"There, and there, and there…" Natsumi pointed out the spots on the floor which she had observed the fortress' experienced denizens avoiding in her years as a slave here, marked subtly by paving stones shaped and arranged in certain ways.

As they moved carefully towards the north wing, they noticed that they were running into less and less opposition as they went along.

"Kagura must have turned the dead soldiers against their comrades so well that they are now overwhelmed outside," Lady Shirakumo remarked. "A useful skill."

Down a long flight of stairs Natsumi led them, across the central hall where scattered soldiers were battling against the dead, and up another lot of stairs, where they encountered only a small group of house slaves huddled together, scared stiff at the sight of the dead soldiers seemingly coming back to life to turn against their own.

The corridors they raced into were empty now, and they only needed to avoid the traps in the floors and walls. But they were also facing more locked doors and magical barriers. While Inuyasha's sword and Totosai's mallet took care of the physical obstacles, Lady Shirakumo tackled the magical ones.

Door after door fell before them, and barrier after barrier dissolved, until Natsumi announced: "Just ahead – there's the door leading to the passageways and rooms of the north wing!"

Inuyasha lifted his Tetsusaiga to shatter the large, barred double doors at the same time as Lady Shirakumo dispersed the barrier, and they were through.

…

Naraku screamed at Hakudoshi for trying to remove the spells around the chamber so that he could get out and fight.

"What are you _doing_ , you little fool?" the spider lord shrieked, dealing his eldest living son such a sharp blow across the face that the boy flew several feet across the room and hit the floor with a thud.

"I'm trying to get out there to do what _you_ are supposed to be doing – our people are getting killed, and we're just sitting in here!" Hakudoshi shouted angrily at his father.

"They are expendable. We are not," Naraku said pragmatically. "You are not to touch that barrier again. Byakuya, show me that you have the sense your elder brother lacks, and prepare the traps."

Sesshomaru, lying still on the floor, watched in silence as Hakudoshi sulked while Byakuya calmly went about the room to suspend in the air around it a circle of magical defences which looked like harmless origami sculptures, but which were designed to unleash a torrent of sharp blades against anyone who penetrated the barrier.

Sesshomaru's heart both lifted and grew weighty with dread as he realised that Inuyasha had come for him after all.

The boy shouldn't have come. He, Sesshomaru, had landed himself in this hell-hole through his own impulsiveness and arrogance, and Inuyasha should have left him to rot in it. Now they could both die or be imprisoned.

But no one had ever been able to stop that child from doing what he was bent on doing, and Sesshomaru knew it only too well.

Something was going on in the chamber, however, in a corner of the room which Sesshomaru could not see without lifting his head from the floor. Strange, grating sounds reached his ears, then Naraku was leaning over him the next moment, removing his chains and whispering: "I'm going to have you _both_."

Although the chains were now gone, a swift spell cast over him rendered him incapable of speech and movement. Then he heard those strange sounds again, another sulky protest from Hakudoshi, and silence. What was happening?

As the crash and boom of doors and barriers coming down grew louder and louder, getting closer to the room where he lay, the demon lord grew tense in anticipation of seeing that beloved face again. He could not smell or sense him, but he could hear him smashing his way towards this spot.

One more mighty crash sounded as iron and stone crumbled to nothing, and onrushing footsteps carried four figures through the billowing dust to the edge of the magical barrier.

…

Inuyasha's heart flew into his mouth as he saw Sesshomaru sprawled on the floor. No one was with him. His clothing was in disarray, as if someone had removed it but hastily redressed him afterwards. His left arm was a stump, and his upper robe was hiked up over his back, showing that the awful wound through his abdomen had not healed yet.

He was not moving.

"Sesshomaru!" Inuyasha yelled through the magical barrier which burned brightly between them.

No answer came from the still figure.

"Can you remove this barrier?" Inuyasha asked Lady Shirakumo, keeping his eyes fixed on Sesshomaru's prone form.

"Not without setting off those traps," the lady replied, pointing out the origami structures.

"Something's not right," Totosai mumbled. "Where's Naraku?"

"I don't know," Inuyasha muttered. "That worries me, but we need to get to Sesshomaru now."

"I've never seen this room before…" Natsumi murmured, realising that she was in an unfamiliar spot.

Just then, they sensed Kagura approaching, and the Naraku-like aura of another demon close by.

"Byakuya!" Kagura's voice echoed angrily from somewhere close by. "I can see you there!"

Inuyasha and his companions turned to see the wind demoness sweeping into the passageway after having destroyed Naraku's security forces, red eyes blazing as she homed in on her youngest brother, concealed in a nook along the part of the passageway that her companions had not explored yet.

Everyone readied their weapons as Byakuya was hauled out into the open, hanging limply from his collar as Kagura held him off the floor from her airborne feather.

"All right, no need to be so hostile," the youngest of the spider children said nervously as he dangled in the air.

"Did you set those traps?" Inuyasha demanded, pointing the Tetsusaiga at him.

"Of course I did, on Father Naraku's orders," he answered.

"Remove them now," Inuyasha snapped.

"Oh dear no, I can't do that," the youngest of the spider children answered. "Father Naraku would have my head for it."

"Byakuya…" Kagura snarled again. "If you know what's good for you, you will remove your traps and disperse that barrier now!"

"Ah, Sister," he smiled. "It is good to see you again. I've missed you."

"Stuff and nonsense," she hissed. "You were newly made when I left. You hardly know me."

"Hmm," he said thoughtfully. "I suppose that means you don't me very well either."

It gave Kagura pause for thought. It was true. She did not know this sibling as she did the older ones, and could not be certain what he was capable of. But this was no time for indecision – she could not even tell if Lord Sesshomaru there on the floor was dead or alive. So she growled at him: "I know you well enough to assure you that you will rue the day you were made if you don't cooperate with us."

Byakuya sighed dramatically. "Oh dear, I suppose that if Father Naraku dies, you will be the head of our family, won't you?"

Leaving that thought to sit in the air between them, Byakuya indicated that she should allow him to move towards the chamber. Leaping off her feather and releasing Byakuya's collar but keeping very close to him, Kagura let him approach the barrier, where he made the traps point away with a wave of his arm.

Lady Shirakumo stepped up to the barrier to work her magic on it, but Byakuya quickly said: "No need for that. I will lower the barrier."

Kagura's eyes narrowed. Something was not right. He was cooperating a little too fast, and too fearlessly. This room was new to her, added on after she had left the family, and she wondered what traps it had that she knew nothing about. But Byakuya was indeed reducing the strength of the shield, so they stepped forward.

Inuyasha passed through the magical shield and rushed over to Sesshomaru, so anxious to reach him that he did not notice how his companions who had stepped into the barrier at the same time as he did were blocked at its rim and forced backwards, and only he was inside.

"Inuyasha!" Kagura cried, but it was too late. They were outside, and he was in there with a motionless Sesshomaru.

Kagura had the presence of mind to seize Byakuya before he could get his entire body through the barrier, and twist his arm behind his back with a swiftness that only a wind demoness could muster. It did not, unfortunately, change the fact that she and the others could not get through.

Inuyasha thumped at the edge of the barrier and found that it now blocked him from exiting. He drew his blade and slashed at the shield, to no avail. He even drew the nulling stone out of his robes and hurled it at the barrier, but it too could not penetrate the shield, dropping to the floor with a loud thud.

In his desperation to save his brother, Inuyasha lifted Sesshomaru carefully into his arms and tried to pass him through to the others, but that did not work either.

"Let us through, or let them out!" Kagura growled at Byakuya, tightening her hold on his arm and making him grimace.

But her youngest brother only smiled painfully and replied: "I can't do that, Sister; I was always so much more obedient than you."

The origami traps were now pointing outwards again, and some pointed inwards at the brothers. With the traps there, Lady Shirakumo could do nothing about the barrier.

"You cheating scum!" Inuyasha shouted at Byakuya from within. "Let us out, and tell us what you've done to Sesshomaru! Why isn't he moving or speaking? What's wrong with him?"

"You'll find out soon enough, Your Highness," Byakuya said calmly.

With that pronouncement, the floor opened up under Inuyasha's feet, sending him and Sesshomaru tumbling into the depths of the castle.

Kagura punched Byakuya in the face in rage. But it changed nothing. They were outside the barrier, and the rigged floor closed up again by some unseen mechanism, sealing the two brothers somewhere far down below, out of their reach.


	44. Dungeons And Demons

Despite the surprise of the floor disappearing under him, Inuyasha fought to remain upright as he fell down, down, down, holding Sesshomaru tight to protect him from the impact of landing, whenever that might come.

He could not look down very well with his brother in his arms, but the scent of the air and sound of the wind whistling past his ears told him that he was getting close to the ground now, so he bent his knees to absorb the shock, and jar Sesshomaru as little as possible.

He grunted as the soles of his boots hit solid stone. Not wanting to fall right over and hurt his brother, he staggered a step or two and managed to fall only to his knees, bruising them. But that was all right. They would heal, and Sesshomaru was still safe in his arms. He just had to get them both out of here.

Inuyasha looked around. Not a ray of light came in from anywhere, but his half-demon eyes could make out the stone walls, floor and ceiling of the large space they were in, with three narrow passageways at the far end. They had possibly fallen past three or four levels of magically rigged flooring above them before landing on this level. The deep echoes and scent of the air suggested that they were in a subterranean dungeon. Strange markings of what looked like black ink were painted over several spots on the walls and ceiling.

No one was with them for now, so Inuyasha turned his attention to his mate-to-be.

"Sesshomaru?" he whispered, gently lowering him to the floor and stroking his beautiful face and hair. "Are you awake?"

The demon lord's golden eyes blazed back at him, as if communicating the message: _I am awake, I am alive._ But he could not move or speak, and Inuyasha guessed that a spell had been put on him.

"Naraku put a spell on you, didn't he?" the prince asked. "I don't know how to undo it, but I will bloody well keep you safe until it wears off, or until we can get to your mother."

But as he made to lift Sesshomaru into his arms again, the scent of the air changed, and he knew that Naraku or Hakudoshi, or both, were making a move. The exits to the passageways across the chamber slammed shut with solid stone doors that Inuyasha knew he would not be able to break down by force – not, as Totosai had warned, without bringing down on their heads more rubble than they would survive being crushed by.

Inuyasha carefully set Sesshomaru down in the middle of the room and stood over him, circling him, watching every corner of the dungeon.

"Welcome to my castle, Inuyasha," Naraku's voice sounded from a high corner of the chamber, underlining the magical nature of the room they were in, for the spider lord who had been invisible a moment before now seemed to melt out from the stone where the wall met the ceiling. "I am delighted to see you here, and looking so well too."

"Naraku," Inuyasha snarled, holding the Tetsusaiga in front of him. "You will pay painfully for everything you've done."

"Will I, now? Your brother believed that too when he left you to confront me, but as you know, things didn't go so well for him. Now that you're here too, can I keep both of you?" Naraku asked, with a smile in his voice.

"Dream on," Inuyasha growled, as he launched himself at the spider lord, wielding Tetsusaiga as if it were an ordinary sword, only three times as large. But a strong spiritual barrier sprang up in front of Naraku, deflecting the blade and preventing Inuyasha from making contact with his opponent.

Naraku melted back into the wall and reappeared at the far corner. Inuyasha flew at him, but again, his barrier-and-disappearance method of avoiding Inuyasha's attacks was used. Over and over, Inuyasha found himself unable to touch Naraku.

Sesshomaru watched in silent frustration as the game played on, knowing that this could not be all Naraku was going to do. He felt the spell slowly wearing off, and found that he could just move the fingers of his right hand. It was hard to remain calm at a time like this, but he forced his emotions and mind to be still, and focused hard on shaking off the effects of the paralysing magic on his body.

But just as he succeeded in moving his legs, drawing them up close to his body so that he could get up, the crafty Hakudoshi slipped out through the enchanted stone ceiling above him and came out of the shadows. The little imp drifted down towards him and was just about to cast another spell to keep him down when Sesshomaru gathered all his strength and blocked his magic with a burst of his demon spirit energy.

That made Inuyasha whip around. The prince saw what was happening, and sprang to his brother's defence at once, punching Hakudoshi hard in the face and sending him sprawling before the childlike demon disappeared back into the stonework.

"Sesshomaru!" he cried, helping the demon lord into a sitting position. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," Sesshomaru whispered in reply, finding that he could now move his tongue. "Behind you…"

Even before he could finish speaking, Inuyasha had already spun around to fend off a tentacle of Naraku's with his blade.

Fumes of venom spewed out from the gash, and the half-demon swiftly carried his brother to another part of the room, to get him away from the poison.

"I'm useless to you at the moment," Sesshomaru hissed, angry with himself for being reduced to such a state. That one burst of demonic energy he had used had left him weak again, unable to do anything else.

"You'll never be useless to me," Inuyasha assured him, moving him to a spot as far away from the fumes as possible, while keeping away from the walls, from which Hakudoshi and Naraku seemed able to emerge at will. "How the hell are they coming through the walls like that?"

"Magic," Sesshomaru stated.

"Natsumi said she had never seen the room you were in before," Inuyasha said under his breath. "Naraku must have recently created this whole structure magically to flow seamlessly with his being."

"And his spawn's," Sesshomaru added, watching for Hakudoshi.

"Those weird paintings…" Inuyasha murmured, staring at the thin black lines on parts of the stonework.

"They look familiar," Sesshomaru remarked.

"They do – but that's not what's just struck me. The places Naraku and Hakudoshi emerged from seem to correspond with the positions of the paintings."

"Yes."

"So let's see what happens if I do _this!_ " Inuyasha grunted as he swung the Tetsusaiga in the direction of one of the paintings, using only a fraction of his strength so that the demon power which fired from the blade would not bring down the ceiling on their heads, but only wreck the surface of the stone.

Small pieces of rubble and dust clattered to the stone floor as the black ink lines were blasted off the ceiling with a hiss and a strange, soft scream. Inuyasha and Sesshomaru had a sense of Naraku's aura seething with rage as Inuyasha aimed another blow at the painting closest to the first one he had destroyed.

When more black ink and stone surfacing rained down, Naraku suddenly shot out from a different part of the room, garnet eyes glowing with anger and excitement above a twisted smile as his tentacles fired from his body towards the brothers.

Inuyasha twirled his blade and drove the tentacles back without cutting them, to spare the recovering Sesshomaru more doses of venom.

"You'll be mine yet!" Naraku hissed triumphantly, firing out even more tentacles before the first lot could regroup, and knocking the Tetsusaiga out of Inuyasha's hands. The blade flew through the air and landed in a far corner of the chamber, out of the dog demons' reach.

Hakudoshi sprang out from another painted stone wall behind them and clapped a barrier spell around Inuyasha with a single movement of his hands, trapping the half-demon under a brightly glowing dome of magical energy.

Inuyasha clawed and pounded at the barrier, but the magic was powerful, and he was stuck. Naraku then emerged fully from the stone and drifted across to Sesshomaru, while Hakudoshi closed in on him from behind.

"Sesshomaru!" Inuyasha yelled, pounding the barrier hard again, to no avail.

The demon lord rose to his feet and stood upright proudly, facing Naraku without bothering to spare Hakudoshi a backward glance.

"It looks like I'll have no need of you after all, Sesshomaru, now that I have Inuyasha," Naraku said. "Although I might still choose to keep you, for my amusement. Let me consider…"

A furious roar issued from Inuyasha, and more futile pounding against the barrier resounded in the enclosed space they were all in.

"I suppose I could entertain myself with a one-armed demon lord," Naraku purred. "But then it may be more trouble than it's worth to keep both of you under control. Besides, where there is life, there is hope, and I certainly don't want to leave you around for your little brother to gaze longingly at while he serves me. He should be in a position of hopelessness, where he knows he will have no one else but me to look forward to for the rest of his life."

Naraku lifted a tentacle and raised it to Sesshomaru's throat, readying it to slash through the demon lord's neck. "Don't hope to be rescued by your mother and godfather up above you, or even by my eldest daughter," the spider lord continued. "Your family cannot break down the stone without killing both of you, while Kagura was disowned long ago and no longer has the authority to penetrate any of my magical walls…"

Naraku trailed off at this point as a sudden flare of powerful demon energy heated the air behind him. In disbelief, he turned his head to see the barrier holding Inuyasha coming apart as the red-clad figure it held blazed with a raw and terrifying force.

Inuyasha's eyes were blood-red, purple markings were creeping over his cheekbones, and the snarl on his face was dominated by large fangs. His mane of silver hair seemed to take on a life of its own, blowing in the lightning-like charge of his out-of-control aura, which was turning full-demon under the threat to Sesshomaru's life. Without the restraining force of the Tetsusaiga to keep his demon energy balanced with the human, nothing could stop his demon side from emerging.

Even as Naraku turned cold with fear, the demon Inuyasha ripped through the magical barrier, heedless of the burns and wounds it left on his flesh. Hakudoshi took a step back in fright and melted into the walls again. Naraku tried to do the same, but he was further away from the paintings, and before he could reach the sanctuary of any of the black ink lines, the creature in the red fire rat robe had pounced on him like a beast and sunk its fangs into his head.

Naraku screamed, and screamed again when Inuyasha's large claws raked his body open. However, Sesshomaru knew that his brother had not torn Naraku's heart, because the spider demon continued to struggle. Ironically, the fact that half of Naraku's body was shredded helped him escape Inuyasha's grasp, because the ribbons of his flesh simply slid through the prince's fingers.

The torn body of the spider lord swam through the air towards the nearest painting, and disappeared into the stone. Sesshomaru was left alone in the chamber with an animal-like Inuyasha, who seemed not to know who he was, or what he was doing there. He remembered how Inuyasha had demanded Tetsusaiga while lying close to death after the glass shard had splintered inside him, saying that he did not want to die mad. Sesshomaru now understood, for this being before him hardly seemed to be of rational mind, judging by the way he snarled and stared like a beast facing a threat.

But something of Inuyasha's conscious mind was still functioning, Sesshomaru was certain, because his brother only looked at him, making no move to attack. Perhaps he knew who he was.

"Inuyasha?" Sesshomaru spoke softly, wondering if the boy could understand. "Inuyasha, we are not out of danger yet. We must get the Tetsusaiga, and remain alert. Naraku is not dead."

The demon half of his brother's being quietened a little, although the red eyes blazed as fiercely as before, and the claws were poised to slash and kill.

Sesshomaru moved slowly towards the fallen Tetsusaiga – slowly because he did not want to provoke Inuyasha, and also because that was the only pace he was able to move at while the spells cast on him were still wearing off. But as he took his third step towards the sword, there was a blur of movement above and behind Inuyasha, as Naraku shot forth from the stone ceiling, tentacles extended, body almost back in one piece.

"Inuyasha! Behind you!" Sesshomaru called urgently.

The demon youth heard him, but either did not understand, or was uncertain of his motives, because he did not react. Naraku wrapped his tentacles all around Inuyasha, pinning his arms to his sides and ignoring his crazed, enraged roars.

"You're quite something, little one," the spider demon leered. "You'll make such a marvellous toy, with the different forms you can take – I wonder if you have a human form as well – wouldn't you be amusing to play with in that shape?"

Inuyasha's fangs tore at the tentacles closest to his face, but Naraku clung on, while his venom filled the air around Inuyasha's head, dazing the prince.

Sesshomaru felt the fire rise into his heart as he saw his beloved, wild brother enclosed in the endless tentacles of the enemy. He had almost no strength left, but he called on the strange power that he could feel protecting him – the priestess-like aura which had kept him from Naraku's violations. He drew on it, and used the last of it to give him a burst of strength that he teamed with the will of his heart. Expending that final ounce of vitality, he stepped forward as quickly as he could to slash at the teeming appendages with the claws of his remaining hand. He ripped several of them apart with that single blow, allowing Inuyasha to tear free and spring away from Naraku.

"He is not your toy!" Sesshomaru growled, raising his arm again, knowing that he was still too weak to use his poison whip, and that he really could use only his claws as very short-range weapons.

Before he could swing his arm at Naraku again in a desperate show of pride and defiance, a long tentacle flew in from the left and drove itself clean through the demon lord's pale body, shattering his chest.

As Sesshomaru fell, Inuyasha snarled and leaped on Naraku again, from behind this time, tearing out the point on his back where his tentacles grew, and once again raking his body open. Naraku howled with pain and fear, feeling those terrible demon claws come much, much too close to where his heart was hidden.

Then Hakudoshi jumped out of the ceiling, grabbed his father, and snatched him up through the stone, where Inuyasha could not follow.

The full-demon prince growled with a beastlike anger at losing his prey, slashed at the ink markings on the ceiling and clawed them off in rage, then jumped back down to the floor and stared coldly at the bloodied body lying at his feet.

"Inuyasha," Sesshomaru whispered one more time, very softly, before he could say nothing more.

But the blood-red eyes of the demon prince only gazed at the broken body before him, unmoved and unfeeling, and it was the last sight that Sesshomaru saw before his terrible injuries overcame him.

The great demon lord drew one more rattling breath through his torn lungs, and died.

…

"I cannot get through," Kagura announced in despair. "Naraku must have crafted a spell that would let the rest of his children use the magic of the chamber, but not me. And that little rat won't cooperate!"

She glared at Byakuya, who was secured within a barrier that Lady Shirakumo had thrown up around him. He was calm and quiet, looking out at them with a peculiarly beatific smile on his face.

"I've been trying to feel my way through the magic used here," Lady Shirakumo said thoughtfully. "I can sense it being utilised frenziedly below. The patterns and signs I detect suggest that this entire column of the chamber before us, and everything below it, has been designed to work almost as if it were a part of Naraku's being. He should be able to flow in and out of the walls and floors provided certain entryways are magically marked on the stone."

"And we can't get through?" Totosai asked.

"No. But perhaps I can help them from up here, if I can block those entryways."

Lady Shirakumo seated herself on the ground outside the barrier, placed her palms flat on the floor, and began to channel her magical powers through the stone, far below. She murmured incantations under her breath, battling through the shields Naraku had put up, letting her magic seep through the tiniest gaps, until she succeeded after several minutes in forcing a few wisps of her own spiritual energy through. She spoke another incantation to complete her task.

She lifted her hands from the floor, and announced: "There. Naraku and the other boy will either have no magical pathways out now, or will be trapped in the stone, as the magic –"

The lady abruptly broke off, as her instincts told her that something had gone very wrong with her only child.

"What is it, my lady?" Natsumi asked with concern, as she saw the elegant frame of the powerful demoness freeze.

"Sesshomaru."

That was the only thing she said, his name uttered with apparent emotionlessness, but with a strange tone to her voice that the others gradually realised was an expression of the deepest pain.

…

The demon Inuyasha stared at the dead body lying at his feet. His beastlike mind was in turmoil, but was incapable of understanding why. He should know this person before him, and a peculiar racing of his heart seemed to be telling him that he ought to care that the body had ceased to breathe, but again, he did not know why.

Traces of a half-remembered dream misted his mind with visions he did not comprehend. Bewildering images of an anxious search for someone in a garden, someone who could not be found… a child who became a grown-up in his arms… a kiss… things he did not know. The demon growled, unable to make sense of anything.

He only knew that he felt compelled to gaze upon that deathly-white, beautiful face before him with its eyelids half-closed over rapidly dulling golden eyes, the curving mark on its forehead, and the stripes over its cheeks.

And he only knew that his own eyes burned to see that sight, although why that should be so, he could not comprehend… until the burning of his eyes proved to be scalding tears, and he simply knew that he must fall onto his knees and touch that torn body with his claws, ever so gently.

In the next instant, the burning tears seemed to wash the red out of his eyes and dissolve the markings from his cheeks, and he was his half-demon self again – a half-demon self who stared disbelievingly at Sesshomaru until the confusion was replaced by horror and utter misery as he cradled his brother in his arms and wept bitterly.

"Sesshomaru… please, no… please, Sesshomaru… no…" he wailed, his tears soaking the demon lord's unchanging face as he alternately kissed him and rocked him, trying with all his being to bring him back to life.

But Sesshomaru remained as he was, without breath in him, and a heart that wouldn't beat.

"You can't leave me!" Inuyasha cried. "You promised you would love me even when we were old and dying – and we're not old yet, so you can't die!"

In his sorrow, he did not notice that Naraku and Hakudoshi had ceased to come out of the walls and ceiling. He did not care and did not know that they had been sealed into the stone for now by the lady's magic. He only knew that the one he loved was lying broken in his embrace, and that Sesshomaru had died looking upon the crazed thing he had become – which he had so feared turning into when he had lain close to death in his bed.

"I came to get you back, and I will take you back!" he screamed. "So you have to live!"

As he moved to wrap his body even more tightly around Sesshomaru, the scabbard of the remaining sword secured to his sash scraped along the stone floor, triggering in his grief-stricken mind a reminder of what Totosai had told him about the blade.

Tenseiga. It could bring back the dead.

Only if it allowed him to wield it. Only if he knew how. And only if the one who had passed on was meant to be brought back.

He had been unable to save Kikyo, perhaps because Tenseiga respected her decision to pass on peacefully. But he was pretty damned sure that Sesshomaru would agree to come back, because…

"Because you _promised_ ," he said fiercely, setting his brother's body down carefully before rising to his feet and drawing the Tenseiga, which he had brought with him with the intention of returning it to Sesshomaru.

As he drew the blade up along the length of its scabbard, Inuyasha whispered a prayer to his father, and to the gods, and to his mother's spirit and Kikyo's: "Please, please, please, I beg you, please help me. Please let me do this. Father, if you are listening, I know this is not the sword you left me, but please let me wield it. Father, I'm begging you – please let me use Sesshomaru's sword!"

As the tip of the thin, elegant Tenseiga emerged from the mouth of the scabbard, Inuyasha whispered one more frantic " _Please!_ " and held the sword before him.

And there he saw them – the little spirits of the underworld who were gathered around Sesshomaru's body, collecting his demon soul to bear it to where it must go.

Tenseiga was made to cut spirit, not flesh, Totosai had said. So Inuyasha held the blade aloft before swinging it over Sesshomaru's body, slicing through the spirit collectors and dispersing their fleshless bodies into nothingness, leaving Sesshomaru's soul to ease back into its shell.

Inuyasha watched and waited for a few tense seconds during which nothing seemed to happen, until his brother's wounds magically started closing up. Only the lost arm did not regenerate.

The prince held his breath for another few moments, then joy flooded his heart. He was overwhelmed by the sheer bliss and sweet relief of an unbearable burden lifting from him as he saw the life returning to Sesshomaru's golden eyes and the breath flowing through his body again.

He dropped to his knees beside Sesshomaru, still clutching the Tenseiga.

"You came back," he whispered, so relieved that he scarcely dared to speak any louder, fearing that his voice would wake him from this dreamlike state.

Sesshomaru said nothing, but first pressed the cool palm of his hand to Inuyasha's face and cupped his cheek, then slid his hand round to the back of the boy's neck and drew him close for a deep, lingering kiss.

Inuyasha believed then that this was no dream, and he rested the Tenseiga respectfully on the ground between them before wrapping both his arms around Sesshomaru and pulling him into a tight embrace, feeling quite contented at the thought of remaining like this forever.

But even the sweetest of embraces must end so that the ones locked in it can look at each other in wonder, caress each other, and live out the rest of their lives. Also, sometimes they must pull apart so that one of them can rail at the other, as Inuyasha now did, when he gripped Sesshomaru's shoulders and snarled at him through his tears: "Don't you DARE do that to me again, you big idiot! Don't you ever sacrifice yourself for me again, and don't die on me like that, _ever_!"

"I'll do my best not to die again," Sesshomaru responded dryly, yet affectionately.

Inuyasha glared at him, picked up the Tenseiga, and sheathed the sword before returning it to Sesshomaru.

"Yours," he said.

"Go and get your Tetsusaiga," Sesshomaru said.

"I don't want to leave your side. Come with me. Naraku and Hakudoshi don't seem to be coming back, but I'm not absolutely sure, so you are staying close to me."

Inuyasha slipped his left hand into Sesshomaru's right, pulled him to his feet, and moved across the room with him to retrieve his sword.

"How did you bring me back?" Sesshomaru asked. "I know I died. I felt the life leave my body."

"Tenseiga," Inuyasha said with a grateful smile. "Totosai told me that because Tenseiga is made to cut spirit, not flesh, it can cut through the spirits of the underworld who come to collect souls. I begged Father's spirit for permission to use your blade, and I saw them – the creatures from the underworld. I cut through them, they vanished, and you came back. It didn't work with Kikyo, though."

"The priestess is dead?" Sesshomaru asked, concerned.

Inuyasha nodded, overcome for a moment by the lump in his throat as he thought of his dearest friend. He explained with a catch in his voice: "Kanna and her mirror demon attacked the village. Kikyo died defending her grand-niece."

"I felt her spirit powers with me, protecting me from the worst of Naraku's acts," Sesshomaru revealed. "Because of her protection, he could not do as much to me as he had wanted to."

"Really?" Inuyasha asked, his eyes shining. "Kikyo helped you? It's just like her. She said her soul would be at rest, but her spirit and love would always be with me."

"And her spirit protected the one you love," Sesshomaru confirmed. "So I have been saved by your priestess' power, and by Father's sword."

He gazed at the Tenseiga in his hand with a new respect. "I suppose Father wanted me to live."

"You're such a moron. Of course Father wants you to live. Tenseiga didn't bring your arm back, though," Inuyasha said as he sheathed his own blade. He was sad about that, but not too mournful, for how did one arm compare with his beloved being alive and well?

"Naraku burnt the arm," Sesshomaru said. "I imagine that the sword, if it does what it does, only restores life and the wounds that were linked to the death of the one it brings back. Perhaps it does not restore older losses. So you are stuck with a deformed mate from here on."

"I don't care about that," Inuyasha whispered, nuzzling Sesshomaru's neck. "I only care that you'll be here for me to get stuck with."

"You'll be stuck with me for a long time," the demon lord replied, nuzzling Inuyasha's hair in turn, inhaling the wonderful scent of his mate, which came through clearly under the wild aromas of wind and battle, dragons and trees, sweat and blood, and the touch of enemies and friends, which filled that silver mane and told whole stories in themselves.

"Yes," Inuyasha agreed, drawing back now and glancing at their surroundings. "Although I'm not sure that we want to be stuck together down here. And we _are_ kind of stuck. How do we get out without getting buried under a ton of rubble?"

"I believe I have recovered enough of my strength to use my poison again. There were openings to tunnels at the far end of this dungeon before those walls came down, were there not? Perhaps I can melt one of those walls."

…

Far above them, Lady Shirakumo's sensitive nose and keen spiritual senses perked up. She suddenly looked quite as insouciant as she always had before the moment when she sensed that her son was no longer of this world.

"My lady?" Totosai spoke in his gravelly voice as he noticed the change in her.

"Perfect."

"I beg your pardon?" the fire demon asked, puzzled.

"I said it was perfect," the dog demoness answered lightly, as she began walking elegantly down the corridor. "Everything is perfectly fine."

The others hurried after her, marvelling that she was now leading the way although she was even less familiar with the layout of this strange new part of the castle than Kagura and Natsumi were. Down the stairs she glided, and further down, until she stopped at a plain stone wall and sniffed it lightly before melting it down with poison from her claws.

"This way," she said, stepping through the large hole she had created. By now, all the others could detect the scents of Inuyasha and Sesshomaru, and Sesshomaru's poison. It was a sheer drop from there to the bottom, but they drifted down gently, Lady Shirakumo by her own power of flight while holding Natsumi, and Totosai on Kagura's feather.

Several crudely finished passageways lay before them, but they followed their noses down the right one, and arrived just as Sesshomaru finished melting down the wall of the chamber.

The brothers stepped towards the group of four, not quite knowing what to say now that they were all reunited. Sesshomaru bowed formally to his mother. She regarded him in silence for a few moments as he straightened his back again after the bow. Then to everyone's surprise, she reached a hand out and touched her son's face before putting her other hand up and drawing his head down to kiss his forehead.

She stepped back with a tiny smile, saying nothing, although she did not need to, for her uncharacteristic silence and actions spoke volumes.

Turning to Inuyasha, she kissed him on the cheek, whispered a quiet "Thank you for bringing my son back to us", and looked into the chamber the brothers had emerged from. She stepped into the room, followed by the rest.

The dog demoness examined the large space in silence for several minutes. When she opened her mouth again, her light tone told the others that she was back to her usual self.

"Those black ink lines are the magical markings Naraku has been using like doorways to move in and out of the walls. I may have sealed them with my magic sent through the stone, but that won't hold him and the other boy in there for very long."

"So we should reach in there, drag them out and seal them behind a proper barrier," Inuyasha said.

"We should," the lady agreed. "However, I can feel that Naraku has also added his own seals behind mine, almost certainly with the objective of preventing us from doing just what you have suggested. I can break through those… with just a little effort."

She pressed her palm to the stone and began to neutralise Naraku's shield.

"Well, there's no other way out for him, is there?" Inuyasha remarked. "Either he stays in there, or he comes out to face all of us."

Kagura was staring hard at the markings, looking as if she was trying to remember something. "These painted marks…" she began. "I think they lead to exits elsewhere…"

"What do you mean?" Inuyasha asked.

"I believe the Lady Kagura means that these magical marks indicate entryways to portals that can open somewhere else," Totosai rumbled. "The blue painting I made above Sesshomaru's bed has the potential to be used like that too, by myself, except that I never activated it, partly because I respected his privacy, but mainly because he would have killed me if I had popped my head into the bedroom without warning, would you not, Sesshomaru?"

"That blue painting is a portal?" Inuyasha gasped, blanching at the thought that their godfather could easily have peered in at him and Sesshomaru going at it like rabbits in the large bed.

"An _unactivated_ one!" the fire demon reiterated. "I was able to sometimes send my voice, or certain scents, from my forge through the painting to Sesshomaru when he was a child, but I couldn't put myself through it without him opening the portal."

"Your father and I asked Totosai to paint something above the bed for decorative reasons, and I imbued it with a spell in case our enemies attacked the castle – we had countless enemies in the days when Sesshomaru was a pup," Lady Shirakumo explained slightly absently, as she focused on applying her powers to the stone. "In an emergency, should Sesshomaru be left alone and helpless, he was to activate the portal on his end so that Totosai could come through from his forge to help him."

"Fortunately, that was never necessary, so it remains dormant," Sesshomaru assured himself and Inuyasha.

"Kagura," Inuyasha addressed the wind demoness. "You're saying that these markings lead out to somewhere else?"

"I remember Naraku using things like these many years ago, as potential escape routes that would have more stability than normal magical portals which use temporary spells that constantly need renewing. But he stopped using them after some time because it was hard to activate them from the other end – someone at that other end is needed to open the exit, and it's never easy to arrange that."

"The exit would have similar markings then?" Sesshomaru asked.

"Yes," Kagura confirmed.

"These markings look so damn familiar," Inuyasha murmured. The next second, his huge golden eyes grew even bigger as he remembered where he had seen them before.

"Bloody hell – the paintings on the earthenware vessels that Naraku gave as gifts during his visit!" the prince exclaimed to Sesshomaru. "They have fine markings like these on them!"

"Where are those vessels now?" Kagura asked urgently.

"In my castle, in the north gallery," Sesshomaru answered.

"No one in the castle would open an exit for Naraku, would they?" Natsumi asked worriedly.

"I wouldn't have thought so," Lady Shirakumo murmured, touching one of the markings with a delicate hand. "But I fear that is exactly what has happened. However, I do have _this_ little devil by the toe…"

As she said those words, she drew her hand back from the stone, apparently pulling something invisibly with it, until a foot emerged from the wall. She closed her fingers around it and hauled Hakudoshi out none too gently. With her other hand, she cast a swift spell on him which left him hanging limp in her grasp, upside-down, like a rabbit knocked out and picked up by a hunter.

"Unfortunately, his father has escaped. Naraku is no longer within these stones."

"Which means…" Inuyasha began.

"It means that he is inside my castle," Sesshomaru growled.


	45. Getting Through

The morning that Naraku vanished from within the magical stone walls of his home, Kazuki had been going about his usual duties in the royal kitchen, removing the stored meat from the ice chamber, preparing items that would need time to set, and putting soup stock on to boil so that it would be full of flavour hours later, when it would be needed for adding to dishes or to be served as broth.

He missed Natsumi. She had left the castle early yesterday with Her Majesty, Lord Sesshomaru's mother, for the human village of the tree sacred to the gods. He usually spent his nights with her, besides meeting a few times in the course of the work day, and his arms had felt empty without her in them last night.

As he stirred the stock and checked the jelly, a particular scent rose above all the smells of the food and fire and made him stop everything he was doing. Sniffing the air carefully with his racoon-demon nose, and finding that all the kitchen smells were getting in the way of that scent, he abandoned his post and wandered into the outdoor walkway, which led to one of the gardens near the north wing.

The kitchens were positioned between the west and north wings, so he was fairly close to the source of the scent. As the scent grew stronger, his footsteps quickened, and soon he was rushing into the north wing like a demon on an urgent errand.

An assistant chef had no business in the north wing without being specifically summoned by someone of higher rank, for its upper floors were occupied by the rather grand bedrooms which housed visiting ministers whenever they remained at the castle for more than a day.

As for the ground floor, one side of it with its own entrance held the art gallery; another side contained rows of small bedrooms for the visiting ministers' attendants; and within a separate, thickly-walled and spell-protected chamber very much like its corresponding chamber in the royal wing, were the furnaces which heated the upstairs baths. None of which Kazuki had anything to do with, in the normal course of events. But he was heedless of all that now, willing to risk punishment to reach the source of that scent – for it was the scent of his mate-to-be in trouble and great distress.

How could Natsumi be here? She couldn't have returned to the castle without his knowledge. Lady Shirakumo had not come back yet, and the Ministers Atsushi and Ryota were still in charge of the castle and urgent matters regarding the running of the kingdom.

"What are you doing here?" a sentry who recognised him as being from the royal kitchen asked as he approached the entrance to the art gallery.

"I need to see the north gallery custodian," Kazuki replied.

The wait was intolerable as the guard passed the message on. After what must have been no more than a minute, but which felt like ten, the custodian appeared.

"Yes? Aren't you Kazuki? What do the kitchens need with me?" he asked, looking fully recovered from the dose of poison that had been delivered by the centipede, and which had left him very ill for a time.

"That scent – from the gallery – what's going on in there?" Kazuki asked, as politely as possible, although he itched to push past the guards and the custodian and charge in.

"What do you mean?" the custodian asked.

"That scent – don't you detect it? I could smell her fear all the way from the kitchen!"

"Whose fear?" the custodian questioned, quite confused now.

"Here!" Kazuki stated, seizing the moment to step into the wing proper and lead the custodian and one of the guards towards the gallery.

As they moved to the centre of the gallery, the custodian and guard suddenly picked up the scent of a female racoon demon in terror. "You're right!" the gallery custodian exclaimed. "I didn't notice it before this."

"Neither did I," the guard remarked suspiciously. "It seems to be coming from that group of vessels."

"Those are the painted earthenware vessels given by Lord Naraku as gifts to Lord Sesshomaru during his last visit," the custodian said. "That is strange – they have not given off any scents like this since they were put in the gallery."

"This vessel in particular seems to be giving off the strongest scent," the guard observed, pointing out a broad, rounded piece in the centre of the group. "Don't touch it. Don't go near it. I'll get the head of security and alert the ministers – we have been told to be particularly cautious about anything relating to Naraku ever since the attack on Lord Sesshomaru and His Highness."

The guard walked briskly out of the gallery, leaving the puzzled custodian there with an increasingly frantic Kazuki, who longed to grasp the vessel and find some way to get to Natsumi, who was obviously in terrible trouble.

…

Satoshi the healer had been in a garden near the north wing, gathering some herbs and flowers to make medicine with, when he heard a slight commotion coming from the art gallery housed in that wing.

A few of the children who were early risers had come out with him to see how he worked, even though the sun was not up yet. He was just explaining to them why some plants had to be picked in the early morning well before sunrise, when the noises reached his ears and a strange smell drifted into his nostrils.

"Stay here," he told the children, motioning to one of the gardeners to keep an eye on the young ones.

The scent reaching his sharp wolf's nose had something both familiar and odd about it.

When he reached the gallery, the two ministers, Atsushi and Ryota, had also just arrived and were speaking to several guards and the gallery custodian, who were saying: "We don't understand what is happening – the scent is strong, as if she is in there, but obviously she cannot be in there."

The assistant chef with the shock of black and white-striped hair, called Kazuki, was speaking earnestly to one of the security officers: "Something must have happened to her. Can't we help her any faster than this?"

Other guards and security personnel were inside the gallery, examining a series of small earthenware vessels, exquisitely shaped and beautifully painted with striking black ink. The odour was very strong now, and it set everyone on edge, because it was the distinct scent of a demoness in great distress. Not just any demoness, but the racoon girl named Natsumi, who was liked by everyone in the castle for her gentle and kind ways.

"I don't understand how the scent of His Highness' attendant could be coming out of those vessels like that," the custodian said, baffled by the phenomenon. "There was nothing like it last night, or indeed at any time since Lord Naraku gave these vessels to Lord Sesshomaru. It appeared only a few minutes ago."

"That was exactly how distressed she was when the spider lord snatched her out of the window during his visit!" Kazuki told the officer. "Something has gone wrong – he must have got to her! Yuno told me that Natsumi left the village for the spider kingdom yesterday, along with the lady and His Highness – Naraku must have caught her!"

"Calm yourself," Minister Atsushi said to the male racoon demon.

The minister was just as concerned about Natsumi, and the scent was very distressing. But he was more wary about the possibility of this being a trap or a trick, considering that the vessels had been a gift from Naraku.

"What do you think?" he asked the head of security.

"Minister Atsushi," the security captain replied. "I believe the vessels, or the markings on them, could be part of a magical portal. Someone may be trying to get through. However, they will not be able to come through unless we open the exit. Such painting-portals can normally be opened by tracing a finger along a preselected mark or line, or by touching the painted item while speaking an incantation."

"Who would be trying to get through?" Atsushi asked.

"The scent would suggest that it is His Highness' attendant in there, but there are ways to store and deliver scents to trick others, so we cannot be certain."

"She's in trouble – we can't just stand by and not help her get out of there!" Kazuki begged. "She could be trying to get away from Naraku right this minute!"

"Use your common sense," Minister Ryota chided the racoon demon. "How would His Highness' attendant gain access to a magical portal of Naraku's? This must be some trick."

"I agree," Minister Atsushi said. "Naraku is up to something. We cannot open the portal. Put these vessels under a security barrier, then lock and seal this entire gallery as well. This was also the place where the mirror shard hid before nearly killing His Highness. I won't have it become the site where another evil scheme of Naraku's is launched."

But at that point, running feet sounded behind them, and three of the castle children came tearing down the passageway, followed by a hapless gardener who was protesting: "Come back here now! You're not supposed to enter this wing!"

"Is Natsumi back?" One of the children called to Satoshi. "That's her scent, isn't it? What's gone wrong with her?"

As everyone turned to look at the children, Kazuki slipped so smoothly and quietly past the guards near the vessels that they scarcely noticed he had shifted his position until he picked up the rounded container with the strongest scent.

"Kazuki!" Minister Atsushi shouted in alarm when he turned to see the earthenware item in the racoon demon's hands.

Kazuki backed away, holding the vessel. "She's in trouble!" he cried. "We can save her! I can hear a voice from inside this thing telling me how!"

"You fool!" Minister Atsushi roared as the guards and security staff rushed at the chef. "Don't let Naraku trick you! You don't know how crafty he is!"

"I have to get her out of there!" Kazuki protested helplessly, throwing himself to the ground even as the guards piled onto him, protecting the vessel with his body and refusing to let anyone tug it away from him.

A disembodied voice drifted out of the vessel in a strange whisper, saying: _Natsumi is in terrible danger – unlock the doorway by…_

The ministers and guards found the rest of the words drowned out in the scuffle – but these whispered words had already been repeated earlier when few others were around, and Kazuki had the advantage of having heard them the first time. Before anyone else could decipher the muffled whisper, Kazuki had traced his claw along the central line marking the vessel, and spoken the incantation: "Come out!"

"Destroy the painted markings!" the head of security yelled to his demons piling on top of Kazuki.

It was too late.

A blast of smoke and venom spewed from the black markings on the vessel, and Naraku suddenly filled the gallery, towering above them all on a mountain of tentacles.

"Damn you, Naraku!" Minister Atsushi cursed, drawing his own blade, although he was so old that he had not faced anyone in serious combat in centuries.

The guards and security staff threw themselves in front of the two ministers to protect them, even as Naraku's tentacles fired towards them and swept them all aside as if they were ants, injecting venom into them and breaking bones left and right.

"Dear gods," Satoshi gasped, scooping the children up and flinging them at the gardener. "You – get the children out of here – _all_ of them! Warn the other servants, and hide the children!"

He ran back towards the gallery to see Kazuki alone, lying on his back on the floor and staring up at the spider lord in horror.

"Thank you, you impulsive, love-struck fool," Naraku sneered at the racoon demon. "I intended that scent to reach you above all others, the one whom I remembered was valiant enough to jump out of the window after his beloved female. It wasn't hard to store that scent of her terror in my body for use later."

"Where's Natsumi?" Kazuki demanded in a voice that shook from fear, yet sang out boldly because his mate-to-be's safety was more important than his own.

Satoshi realised that the guards were too busy protecting the ministers to care what happened to one unimportant assistant chef. He suspected that they were not particularly inclined to help Kazuki at this point in time, not when he was the fool who had let the monster into the castle.

Cursing under his breath, the healer darted in amongst the tentacles and hauled Kazuki behind a large bank of sculptures which shattered as a long appendage smashed them into tiny pieces.

"Move!" Satoshi growled, shoving the racoon demon before him into the next section of the gallery, partially shielded by pillars.

Neither of them had been specifically trained for battle, but Satoshi was a wolf demon, and all wolf demons who had been raised in Prince Koga's tribe knew how to fight and protect themselves and others. One did not survive cubhood in their harsh territories without knowing such things; one did not survive without being quick on one's feet.

Praying to the gods that he would live to see his parents and siblings again, Satoshi hauled Kazuki through a narrow gap between two pillars which shattered after them under the beating Naraku gave them.

 _This whole gallery will collapse if Naraku keeps smashing the pillars!_ Satoshi thought, pushing Kazuki towards the shuttered windows and smashing them open.

A tentacle seized his thigh and dragged him back, deep into the gallery, but before Naraku could turn his full attention to him, the guards had regrouped, reinforcements had arrived, and the two ministers had been ushered out of harm's way.

Poor Kazuki, loyal to a fault and none too canny in the area of combat, came rushing back to help Satoshi, wielding a sword that one of the fallen guards had dropped. He hacked at a tentacle, only to get a faceful of venom which knocked him out like a light.

Satoshi, who had seen what was coming, held his breath before the racoon started slashing, and pulled out from his robe a potent mixture of herbs and medicines that he had deliberately crafted to mimic the physical effects of human monks' sutras and priestesses' sacred arrows. It would do no harm while wrapped in layers of linen, but once applied directly to demon flesh, it would burn. It wasn't as effective as the real thing it tried to mimic, but it would be distraction enough.

It worked in the sense that Naraku dropped him long enough for him to fling the unconscious Kazuki out of the window, but it failed because another tentacle quickly seized him, and lifted him high up in the air to come face to face with the spider lord.

"Hmm… I would have killed you before you did that," Naraku smiled. "But now I think I'll keep you around to teach me how it's done. A useful little trick, that, and I do see now that you have rather pretty eyes…"

…

The rest of them were of no use to Lady Shirakumo while she tried to crack the portal spell, so Sesshomaru and Inuyasha spent the time quietly asking each other what had happened while they had been apart. As they talked, Sesshomaru's older wounds healed, and he regained strength by the minute.

"How did you get the shard out?" he asked.

"Bokusen'o sent one of his roots to the holy tree in the village, and worked with the tree, Kaede and her grand-niece to pull it out of me. It seems that Naraku's magic doesn't work so well against trees. What about you? You must have suffered so badly here."

"It wasn't so bad."

"I find that hard to believe."

They wanted to kiss, perhaps do more. But in front of their companions, they thought it best to just hold hands and speak softly. Unexpectedly, their conversation was interrupted by someone outside the chamber, calling Sesshomaru's name.

"Lord Sesshomaru? Is that really you down there?" a voice called from high above, coming down from the hole in the wall that Lady Shirakumo had made in order to reach her son and Inuyasha. "Lady Shirakumo? Your Highness? Am I really sensing all of you there?"

The voice was very familiar, yet it did not belong in Naraku's castle.

Inuyasha sniffed the air, identified the demon aura of the individuals above, and quickly recognised one of them.

"It's your favourite demon-bird female," he scowled at Sesshomaru, releasing his brother's hand.

"Ambassador Tsubasa?" Sesshomaru called.

The sound of demon flight preceded the appearance of the said female, who landed gracefully in the passageway before the chamber with two attendants and bowed to the demons and half-demon she had not expected to find here.

"Ambassador, what are you doing here?" Sesshomaru asked.

"Lord Sesshomaru, I could ask the same of you… oh, but you are hurt!" Tsubasa observed his missing arm with some concern.

"No matter, I am well now. Why are you in Naraku's castle?"

"I came with a delegation, bearing a declaration of war on the princedom of the spiders from my queen," Tsubasa explained. "Our armies pursued a horde of spider-demon bandits attempting to invade our villages again. They chased them deep into these lands. Normally, such pursuits do not last long, because our armies only get beaten back by the battalions at Naraku's northern border once they get that far. This time, however, the battalions were gone – wiped out."

"By His Highness," Kagura stated.

"Then we owe His Highness much thanks," Tsubasa smiled. "Our armies caught up with the bandits, seized their leaders, and tortured them for information. They admitted that Naraku has always sent them word by one means or another that they may do as they please along the border he shares with us. When told of that, Queen Abi immediately sent me here to declare war on Naraku. But all I have found is a castle filled with dead soldiers and slaves fleeing the grounds – and then you, all the way down in the bowels of the complex."

"We had almost caught Naraku himself, when he escaped through a magical portal," Sesshomaru said, thinking it unnecessary to go into long explanations about his abduction and rescue. "We are trying to make the brat there tell us how to get through the portal ourselves."

Tsubasa's eyes narrowed as they fell upon Hakudoshi, imprisoned inside Lady Shirakumo's barrier. Hakudoshi shrank away as the demon bird ambassador approached him.

"Oh, the little rat!" Tsubasa exclaimed, her dark eyes gleaming. "So it's you! 'A boy-like demon of small stature, with purple eyes and shoulder-length white hair' – that is how our troops at the shared border have always described the mysterious figure who is often seen egging the bandits on! My queen would love to get her claws on you, after Naraku!"

Hakudoshi whimpered and tried to conceal himself, but there was no place within the constricting barrier to hide.

"Why haven't you tortured him for the information you need?" Tsubasa asked. "Our armies find that works very well and very fast."

"It's not _my_ way," Inuyasha stated firmly.

"I might have done such things in previous centuries," Sesshomaru remarked. "But I do not do such things now. However, if Queen Abi wants the boy more than his sister does, I can consider handing him over."

"No!" Hakudoshi cried desperately, knowing well the cruelty of the bird demons towards their enemies. "No, please! Kagura… Sister! Please don't give me to them!"

"If you want to stay with me rather than be given to them, you had better tell us how to get through the portal," Kagura growled at her brother.

"I'll tell you – I'll tell you!" Hakudoshi cried. "There's a lock on the spell to prevent anyone other than Father Naraku, Byakuya, Kanna and me from using the stone doorways and the portal. If you examine the primary elements of the spell beneath the scale-pattern of random pieces, you will see that the fourth element from the dragon scale is where the lock is, concealed to look like an ordinary air element, but it is in fact a stone element, spliced with iron…"

"Whaaaa…?" Inuyasha went, ears twitching irritably, bewildered by what was no more than gibberish to him.

But Lady Shirakumo seemed to understand perfectly. "I see," she smiled coldly at the spider boy, before turning to face the wall again and using her trained vision to examine the elements that made up the magical aspects of the markings. "Ah, yes… a very sly disguise, and further concealed amidst random elements. I suppose we would have found it eventually, but only after much deeper examination."

"Are you sure there is no further trap, Mother?" Sesshomaru asked.

"There's no trap – I swear!" Hakudoshi cried. "The portal should still be open provided that no one has destroyed the markings on the other end. Once opened on that end, such portals always remain open until closed by the user. If Father Naraku has not had time to close it, it will be open. But there is no danger – even if you find it closed, you can always head back down this way. Now that the barriers have been taken off, you can always make your way back into this chamber. Sister, please…"

Kagura stared deep into his wide purple eyes, penetrating his soul with her garnet orbs. She knew this brother of hers very well. Kanna had been created only days after she herself was made by Naraku, and Hakudoshi came several years later – but she had spent more than enough decades figuring out all his tricks. So she was able to confidently say to her companions: "I believe he has no further traps up his sleeve. We can go through safely. I shall go first, to make sure that everything is safe."

"No, Kagura," Sesshomaru said. "You have your brothers to deal with here, and your princedom, as well as Queen Abi's declaration of war. You must remain here to get this land and your family in order – it is your first priority. The rest of us will deal with Naraku at my castle."

"Are you sure?" Kagura asked, worried for their safety.

"You have helped us more than enough," Inuyasha spoke. "I am very grateful to you for all you have done, but Sesshomaru is right. It's time this land had a proper ruler."

"The Lady Kagura has a good reputation with my cousin the queen, for her capabilities and strength," Tsubasa said. "I think I can safely say that the queen will retract her declaration of war once I report that Lady Kagura is now in charge."

"I would appreciate it if Queen Abi would be so generous, and if she would be good enough to give me some time to restore order in this lawless patch of land," Kagura said formally in return.

"Good, everyone's happy. Now let's get through this blasted stone and blow Naraku out of the castle!" Inuyasha snapped impatiently. "It's already been an hour since he slipped through the portal – I'll be surprised if we don't find everyone dead when we get there."

"But at least we will get there much faster than if we had _flown_ , as you wanted us to do," Lady Shirakumo reminded the half-demon.

"Six hours at least, that would have been," Totosai mumbled.

"Okay, okay, I get it already!" Inuyasha sighed. "So how do we get through? And how long does it take to get from here to there?"

"It depends," Kagura explained. "Some portals need several minutes to carry you from one place to another, others do it in seconds. Still others hold you for much longer than that before releasing you at the other end."

"The portal Naraku used to transport me to this castle took a long time," Sesshomaru remarked. "I was not fully conscious then, but even so I was aware that it was a relatively long passage. Perhaps two hours."

"That may have had to do with the way the portal spell was set up," Kagura said. "He may have wanted time… perhaps because he had originally intended to bring _Inuyasha_ with him rather than you – a portal that would move its users along that slowly may also have been designed in some way to tranquilise or weaken the one Naraku was taking with him. He would have needed that, especially as it seems he had not intended to injure Inuyasha the way he injured you."

"I hope this one doesn't take that bloody long," Inuyasha muttered.

"It shouldn't," Lady Shirakumo said, examining the structure of the spell again. "It should get us there quickly."

"Then go, and go safely. I will send someone to the border with the two dragons that Inuyasha and Master Totosai flew here on, after they have rested," Kagura said, remembering the faithful beasts which had borne their riders so far.

"Thank you," Sesshomaru acknowledged her thoughtfulness.

"I'm going first, as I'm in the best shape to deal with what may be waiting there," Totosai said. "The lady's used too much magic these past few hours, Sesshomaru's wounded, and Inuyasha's a bit battered. So me, then the lady, then Inuyasha and Sesshomaru. Natsumi should go last."

Natsumi had returned to Sesshomaru the armoury sword Inuyasha had given her, so he had an offensive weapon in case Naraku awaited them at the exit. Then Totosai jumped through the markings on the wall, followed by Lady Shirakumo. Sesshomaru went right on Inuyasha's heels, and Natsumi fast after him.

Tsubasa and Kagura were left in the chamber waiting to see if they would reappear. Would the exit already be sealed?

…

The five who had entered the portal found themselves drifting swiftly through what their senses told them was a tunnel of a peculiar nature, composed of light and space and magical elements that became visible even to Inuyasha's and Natsumi's untrained eyes.

Inuyasha tried to speak to the ones ahead of him, to ask if they could see an exit. But his voice seemed to be lost in the tunnel, or at the very least slowed down and muted, so that it floated strangely through the space and reached Lady Shirakumo several seconds later.

She turned to look at him, but only put a finger on her lips. Perhaps sound could travel out through the portal and alert Naraku? Or perhaps it was generally not a good idea to speak while travelling through a portal? He didn't know, but he kept quiet anyway, checked that Sesshomaru and Natsumi were still with him, and allowed the magic of the portal to carry him forward for another few seconds, until at last they saw light – a more natural rather than magical kind of light.

Totosai vanished through the exit, then the lady, then Inuyasha holding Sesshomaru's hand, and Natsumi on their heels.

Out they leaped into the north art gallery, which was flooded with morning sunlight streaming through smashed windows and large holes in the wall. Shattered pillars and smashed sculptures presented them with piles of rubble to make their way over. Dead guards lay scattered across the floor. A lone healer, a female fox demon, was kneeling over one of the guards, trying to resuscitate him.

"No, no, no!" she cried, thumping at his chest as he died, before wiping away her tears with the back of her hand when she suddenly realised that five other living people were in the gallery with her.

Inuyasha felt sick as he looked at the bodies. He knew most of these guards – he already recognised many of their faces and scents after less than two months at the castle, and had exchanged nods and casual words with some of them as he moved about the place. These people had families – parents, mates, children… then it began to sink in that he, too, had destroyed countless lives at the border with one swing of his Tetsusaiga, and he began to wish that he had handled Naraku's border guards some other way….

But Sesshomaru was saying something.

"There may still be time," the demon lord stated, drawing the Tenseiga. "Inuyasha, tell me if I am doing this right… it has been an hour – perhaps there is time. Healer, how many of these have only just died?"

"My lord," she said breathlessly. "This guard I am with passed away only seconds ago. Some of the others… some died these few minutes past from the poison… the rest much earlier…"

Moving swiftly from body to body, Sesshomaru swung his blade wherever he saw that the spirits of the underworld had not completed their work yet. It was too late for a few of the guards, who had been among the first slain by Naraku and who had died instantly. But those who had been left to bleed or slowly asphyxiate to death on his poison, and who had clung on as long as they could, were revived.

"My lord!" the resurrected guards gasped in confusion as they came around to find their king standing over them. "Wh-"

They were about to ask what happened, when it occurred to some of the quicker-minded ones that it was hardly their place to question their lord, and that they should be reporting what they knew to him.

"Your Majesty, Naraku entered the castle through one of those earthen vessels he brought with him on his visit. He has seized some of the staff," one of them explained.

"Where are the ministers?" Sesshomaru asked.

The highest-ranking of the guards brought back to life said: "My lord, I last saw the ministers shielded by a large group of our guards, but I honestly do not know what has become of them."

"Where are the other healers?" Sesshomaru questioned the female fox demon.

"Healer Satoshi was taken by Naraku," she replied. "Healer Yoshi and the others are tending to the injured in the healing rooms – more and more wounded keep getting sent there… we started treating these initial casualties here on the spot, then the healing rooms began filling up with others… so many others…"

"It's all my fault," came a small voice from outside.

They turned to see Kazuki limping in through one of the shattered windows from the garden beside the gallery.

"I scented Natsumi in trouble," Kazuki confessed miserably. "And I heard a voice telling me how to get her out of there. So I opened the portal – only for Naraku to emerge. I would have died if not for Satoshi. Naraku has him now."

"Why would you do such a thing?" Natsumi demanded, almost in tears.

"I thought you were hurt…" Kazuki mumbled, taking both her hands in his. "I didn't know it was a trick of Naraku's."

"Stop mumbling," Sesshomaru chided. "Make yourself useful and tell me what else you know."

"I have been trying to do just that by gathering as much information as I can over the past hour, my lord," Kazuki answered, still sounding dazed. "Naraku has locked himself into in your throne room. He has taken Satoshi, your attendant Isshin and a few others prisoner. Almost all the soldiers and security staff have surrounded the room and are trying to break in, but the barrier spell is very strong. The ministers were shepherded into one of the rooms in the security wing by another group of guards to get them away from Naraku, but the spider lord has sealed them in there with more spells. I don't think they can get out."

"If Naraku has Satoshi, what about the children?" Inuyasha asked, worried.

"One of the gardeners gathered them and got most of them out of the castle grounds with Jaken sensei's help, but I don't know if all of them made it. They are probably hiding in the forest. It's my fault, it's all my fault," Kazuki whispered, looking around at the bodies of the guards whom Tenseiga had not been able to revive.

"I'll deal with you later," Sesshomaru said ominously. "Stay out of the way for now, and let Natsumi tend to your injuries. We will go to the healing rooms first to save whomever we can. Then it will be time for us to finish Naraku once and for all."


	46. Strength In Numbers

Inuyasha had been raring to go and destroy Naraku the moment Sesshomaru and the Tenseiga had revived all who could be saved in the healing rooms – until Totosai remarked that it would be best for those brought back to life to remain in the rooms, because Tenseiga could be used only once on a person.

That was when the prince's fears for Sesshomaru returned in full force, and he took his brother aside to try and make him stay with the recovered soldiers while he, Lady Shirakumo and Totosai went after the spider lord.

Unsurprisingly, Sesshomaru refused firmly, saying: "Don't be afraid for me – I won't allow myself to be killed by Naraku again."

Inuyasha did not want the soldiers to know that Sesshomaru had died once already, so he could not argue back, and had little option but to hurry after Sesshomaru when the demon lord strode out of the healing rooms, towards the throne room.

What they found there was complete chaos.

Despite the best efforts of the commanding officers, the areas around the throne room, indoors and outdoors, were in upheaval when Sesshomaru, Inuyasha, Lady Shirakumo and Totosai entered the wide hallway of the castle that morning.

They could hardly blame the soldiers or their officers. A foreign lord was ensconced in their king's throne room with prisoners, and their magical security experts were unable to break the barriers around the room. Their ministers were sealed up elsewhere, and all attempts to batter, claw, kick or hack their way through the closed doors and shuttered windows had failed.

Worse, they had heard rumours that their lord had been maimed and seized by the one who had invaded their castle, that their prince had gone to his rescue but surely would only be following him to his death, and all was lost. Naraku's shocking appearance in the castle only added strength to those rumours.

Thus, when the royal family entered the hallway, a hush swept like a wave over the assembled demons, washing over those nearest to them, spreading towards the grand entrance of the castle, then gradually outdoors, where other soldiers were beating against the walls and windows of the throne room.

This hush was succeeded by a silence so pure that for a few seconds it sounded as if they were standing in an empty hallway. Then pandemonium broke out again, but it was a different chaos this time, one of relief and excitement, as the soldiers and guards saw with their own eyes that Sesshomaru and Inuyasha were not lost forever, but standing proud and tall before them again.

Sesshomaru's demon-silk clothing had repaired itself swiftly once the spells on him wore off, and by the time he had stepped into the portal, his white robes were pristine, free of the ghastly bloodstains and large gashes that had marred their appearance. With his long sleeves hanging down, most of the demons present did not even notice at first that his left arm was missing.

"How long has it been since Naraku barricaded himself in the throne room?" Sesshomaru's voice rang out low and clear through the grand hallway. "How many of our people has he taken prisoner?"

"It has been half-an-hour since he put up the barrier, my lord," the head of security replied, stepping forward. "He has your head attendant, the wolf-demon healer, the art gallery custodian and one child who was not with the rest who escaped into the forest. There may be more hostages, as the housekeepers tell us that one girl, Morio's daughter, is missing, but we cannot confirm that. My best magical security experts have been working on the barrier with no success. It is very powerful."

"Naraku's barriers are indeed powerful," Lady Shirakumo agreed. "But having been given some inside knowledge about how he constructs his magical spells, I believe I may have a better idea than the rest of you how to break his shields down."

The lady glided to the great door of the throne room, examined the barrier that made it more than a mere physical block, and touched the tip of one claw lightly to it before tracing strange symbols on the wood. What exactly she was doing, Inuyasha had little idea, but she appeared to be undoing, unlocking and neutralising invisible components, one after another, in lines and rows and circles.

All he knew was that it worked, because the barrier suddenly flickered, then dispersed. Lady Shirakumo stepped back, and the security officers and soldiers forced the great doors open.

The sight that greeted their eyes was both fully expected and startling at the same time.

Naraku was seated quietly on Sesshomaru's throne, a calm smile on his face. His primary body was dwarfed by the sea of tentacles that almost filled the room. At the tips of several of those secondary limbs were his prisoners.

Satoshi was forced into a crouched, kneeling posture beside the throne, on the floor of the dais. Isshin struggled to breathe within coils of unyielding muscle which crushed him against the wall to the spider lord's left. The terrified art gallery custodian was pinned to the floor by another appendage which extended the length of the room. A girl from the housekeeping department, Mamoru's sister, was unconscious in the ruthless embrace of another of Naraku's bizarre false arms. And the fox-demon child with the bright green eyes whom Inuyasha had patted and comforted on previous occasions was sobbing, dangling upside-down by his tail high in the air, held almost up to the ceiling by a long tentacle which gave him a vicious jerk every few seconds to make him yelp for Naraku's entertainment.

"Bad boy," Naraku purred at Inuyasha. "You really tried to kill me back there. You truly don't want me, do you?"

"If you were the last living creature in the world I'd still drown myself before accepting you," Inuyasha snapped.

"Such a pity. We could have had a wonderful life together. But as you won't have it, I'll have to destroy all of you with my puppet friends."

"Puppet friends…?" Inuyasha wondered aloud, only to find out what Naraku meant when he thrust his arms out from his body and abruptly became five Narakus all at once.

"Puppet magic!" Lady Shirakumo exclaimed softly, gliding back out of the throne room and drawing the others with her as an ocean of tentacles came after them.

"What the hell just happened?" Inuyasha demanded, as the guards who had previously worked so hard to force the doors and windows open now held them shut, trying to keep the hideous things at bay while their leaders hastily organised a strategy to deal with the nightmare.

"The real Naraku has puppets concealed within his being, and each of them can project an exact replica of him, down to his scent and aura, fully capable of everything he is," the lady explained briefly. "If you destroy one, you only destroy the puppet – the only way to end this is to kill the original."

"Which we cannot identify among that mass of limbs," Sesshomaru growled.

"We'll just have to kill all of them!" Inuyasha declared.

"Officers!" Sesshomaru gave his orders. "Divide your soldiers among the replicas of the enemy. The puppets will be easier to kill off than the real Naraku – sever the head or destroy the chest, and they should vanish! Go!"

The soldiers let go of the doors and windows, and Naraku and his replicas exploded from the throne room, scattering across the castle grounds in all directions. Each held one hostage.

"Soldiers! Into five groups!" the general of the castle forces bellowed. "Leave none of these replicas unchallenged! Protect our people!"

Sesshomaru, Inuyasha, Totosai and Lady Shirakumo themselves flew into action, each one pursuing a Naraku and leaving the fifth one to the guards who had gone after it.

Sesshomaru sprang after the one who had seized his attendant, Isshin, and found himself having to hack and whip with precision around the dog demon, for this Naraku was using his hostage very effectively as a shield.

"Never mind me, my lord," Isshin gasped breathlessly.

"Shut up, Isshin," Sesshomaru snarled, before sailing over the heads of the soldiers on the ground and hacking clean through the tentacle that held the loyal servant. He hauled him out of the toxic fumes towards the soldiers with some difficulty as he had only one arm to use for both rescuing him and wielding his sword. The soldiers then cleared a path for him, and he flew straight through the mass of tentacles to hack off the head of the enemy with the armoury sword.

The replica evaporated into thin air, proving what Sesshomaru had suspected from the moment he had succeeded in freeing Isshin: this was not the real Naraku, because he had been far too easy to tackle.

"Get out of here," Sesshomaru ordered Isshin, before flying across the grounds towards the next tower of tentacles.

Inuyasha, meanwhile, had gone after the Naraku who had the child in his grasp. He had not wanted to separate from Sesshomaru, fearing that he would lose his brother again, but the little fox demon was so petrified that he had to get to him at once. By the time this Naraku had flown out into the open field near the wing holding the staff rooms, the child was in shock, and his wails were emerging from his mouth in jerky little gulps.

"Your weakness has always been your concern for others," the Naraku before him sneered. "I could have given you power and strength by teaching you how to put yourself first."

"Don't need to learn that sort of shit!" Inuyasha snapped, before chopping the spider demon's body in half.

Damn, he'd missed the chest, and still didn't know if this was a puppet or the real Naraku. And the child was dangling in the way of the spider demon's head, right over the toxic miasma spewing from below.

"Don't hack at those things any more – the child's too young to handle the poison!" Inuyasha warned the soldiers with him.

In an impulsive but ultimately effective move, the prince sprang onto one of the tentacles and launched himself off it high above the demon's head where, predictably, about twenty tentacles rose into the air after him. He planted his boots on a big, thick one and rode it downwards, using it to shield himself from the other appendages, then thrust his sword deep into the demon's head. It vanished in a cloud of toxic fumes, leaving Inuyasha to catch the child, cover him with the lapel of his robe, and leap clear of the poison.

"Get him to a safe place!" Inuyasha yelled to one of the soldiers as he tossed the boy into his arms.

Then he bounded across the next three fields in great leaps until his nose and then his eyes told him that he had reached the scene of a battle with another of the Narakus. To his relief, he was swiftly joined by Sesshomaru, who had come looking for him.

They had arrived not a moment too soon, for Lady Shirakumo, tired from having used so much of her magic here and at Naraku's castle, was flagging under the onslaught of the advancing tentacles, relying on the soldiers with her to keep her in one piece while she wielded her poison whip.

"Mother!" Sesshomaru called, swooping in and lifting her out of the tangle of limbs. "Leave this to us."

"You haven't recovered yet," she protested, annoyed at finding herself picked up like a child by her own son.

"I've recovered enough," he said, depositing her in the care of a posse of guards just as Inuyasha launched himself at the Naraku with Mamoru's sister in his grasp. Sesshomaru flew at the spider demon a moment after, armoury blade flashing. Together, they made quick work of this replica and caught the falling girl, who remained unconscious.

"Get her to the healers!" Inuyasha ordered, springing towards the next battle with his brother beside him.

Only two of the Narakus were left – the one holding Satoshi, and the one with the art gallery custodian. More soldiers were clustered around both of the enemies now that the other three had been eliminated. Others joined them, as the security staff had at last succeeded in freeing the two ministers and their guards from the administration wing, using the technique Lady Shirakumo had shown them earlier.

"If I were to think the way Naraku would think, I suspect the real one would hold on to the prettier hostage – Satoshi looks a hell of a lot better than the gallery guy, so it'll be the one with him," Inuyasha murmured to Sesshomaru. "I thought it would be the one with Isshin, as he's good-looking, but maybe he likes the look of Satoshi better?"

Sesshomaru, turning his head fractionally towards Inuyasha as they sped towards the two remaining foes in the field behind the administration wing, demanded: "So you think both the wolf _and_ Isshin look good?"

"For pity's sake, don't start that _now_ ," Inuyasha groaned. "You're the bloody best looking of the lot even with one arm, okay? Now can we get on with killing these spiders?"

"Fine," Sesshomaru replied, taking to the air and flying straight at the Naraku with Satoshi, who was being tackled by Totosai and a host of guards.

"I think this is the real one," Totosai warbled in an indiscreet whisper to Sesshomaru as his godson flew past his head.

"You believe I'm the genuine article, do you?" the Naraku towering above them sneered, applying a crushing grip to Satoshi.

"Guards, all of you – help your comrades destroy the other Naraku and rescue the gallery custodian!" Inuyasha ordered. "Leave this one to us!"

"You too, little prince?" the Naraku before him laughed. "You think I'm the real one? You _do_ know me well, don't you? You should have chosen me as your mate."

"Shut your mouth," Sesshomaru snarled, sniffing the air to look for differences in scent between this one and the others. It was no good. They all seemed identical.

"Maybe I shouldn't bother saving the wolf, as you think he _looks good_ ," Sesshomaru muttered to Inuyasha as they sailed past one another towards the main body of the Naraku before them.

"Bloody hell, Sesshomaru!" Inuyasha grunted. "Don't think I don't know that you used to take Isshin into your bed. Do I begrudge you going after him first of all the hostages?"

Satoshi was in great pain, but retained enough of a sense of humour to groan when they reached him: "Please either save me or kill me quickly – this is torture!"

"You're telling me!" Totosai grumbled, finding a path clear now to blast a stream of fire at the Naraku they faced.

The demon shrieked in pain, but did not disintegrate, and was so intent on protecting his head and chest from the blades flashing at him that Satoshi was in serious danger of being minced.

Totosai's mallet whirled into the mix, slamming several tentacles aside with one powerful blow and allowing Inuyasha to nip in, swing the Tetsusaiga and sever the limb gripping Satoshi. Sesshomaru flew in, caught the wolf demon, and bore him to safety.

He set him down on the grass a good distance away, glared once into his too-good-looking face, and charged back into the fray.

"I'm going over there!" Totosai yelled to the brothers. "If those guards take any longer to get rid of that one, it will be nightfall before we determine that this one is the real Naraku!"

But as Totosai swung hard at the spider demon who held the gallery custodian, and the brothers attacked the one they had just freed Satoshi from, successfully decapitating them, both bodies vanished in billows of toxic fumes, leaving them with the sickening realisation that they had been tricked once again.

None of the Narakus they had battled out in the fields had been the real one.

"Where is he?" Inuyasha wondered frantically. "We didn't miss one, did we? There were five, weren't there?"

"We must have been fooled from the start," Lady Shirakumo glided up to them to say in an unbelievably calm manner, considering the situation. "Naraku was inside that throne room for a good half-hour, at least. From the moment he closed himself up inside, out of sight, he must have created another puppet. Especially if it was one with all its tentacles extended to fill the room and confuse the hostages as they were seized and passed from one limb to another, then the real Naraku, much smaller with all his secondary limbs retracted, could have easily slipped behind a camouflaging barrier to hide from everyone's eyes. The chaos that erupted when he replicated the first puppet and they broke out of the castle in every direction would have distracted us sufficiently to leave the real one unnoticed. We never talked to the real Naraku in the throne room."

"And the air is now filled with his scent thanks to all the poison fumes!" Inuyasha yelled in frustration. "Where the devil is he?"

"Patience," Sesshomaru said, stilling himself and sending out his senses to find a trace of Naraku more distinct than everything filling all the fields around the castle. "Use your nose and your spiritual senses."

A minute later, Sesshomaru was taking flight, bearing Inuyasha with him.

"Oh no," Inuyasha whispered as he too caught the scent and aura, coming from the forest patch. "Oh no, no… not Bokusen'o!"

But it was indeed Bokusen'o that the real Naraku had gone after, having spent the time in the throne room feeling out his surroundings and picking out the faint signs of a peculiar demon power to the south of the castle structure, far out in the sprawling grounds.

" _You're_ the one I didn't count on," Naraku was saying to the tree demon as the brothers sped towards the forest patch. "You… a tree demon… that's how the prince got his shard out without it killing him. Oh, what I could do with powers such as yours…"

Inuyasha panicked, knowing how worn out Bokusen'o was from sending his root through so many miles of earth to the village to save him. He would not have the strength to… _no, no, no!_

Even as he screamed that desperate denial in his heart and Sesshomaru flew at top speed towards the little piece of forest, they saw Naraku sprout a massive bank of tentacles which slammed with full force into the tree demon and poured gallons of poison into his trunk, which creaked, tore, split and finally broke apart.

" _Bokusen'o, NO!_ " Inuyasha screamed, springing to the ground between his godfather and Naraku, and swinging the Tetsusaiga hard at the spider demon, tearing a mighty scar across the earth and through the air away from the forest patch. Half of Naraku's tentacles were ripped off his body, but he had dodged the main blow.

"Naraku, you piece of filth!" Sesshomaru roared, slashing at the spider demon with his poison whip to drive him away from the forest patch, preventing him from absorbing Bokusen'o's powers.

As the brothers rained furious blows on Naraku, Totosai and Lady Shirakumo rushed to the fallen tree demon, and detected no life in the toppled trunk.

"My old friend…" Totosai murmured.

Lady Shirakumo placed her hand reverently on the bark of the snapped trunk, and whispered: "Old one, not you… not like this…"

"You bastard!" Inuyasha bellowed, charging in so recklessly at Naraku that he almost overbalanced and fell straight into the tentacles waiting for him. But he righted himself just in time to escape and launch another assault on their tricky foe.

Sesshomaru swooped in from the same direction, forcing Naraku further out into the field, away from the forest. Perhaps if they gave his mother space and time, she could somehow save Bokusen'o. Or maybe they could use Tenseiga… but would the sword work on a tree demon? Was Bokusen'o too old? Tenseiga had not revived the priestess Kikyo…

Inuyasha let rip another mighty blow from the Tetsusaiga, careful to aim away from the castle. He shredded Naraku's body this time, but to his dismay, as the ribbons of flesh scattered and then regathered in the air, he saw Naraku's beating heart, whole and undamaged, swiftly being reabsorbed by the rest of the body coming together.

"There!" Inuyasha pointed out the spot to Sesshomaru, who thrust his armoury blade at the target, only to be disappointed when Naraku contorted his body and moved his heart away.

"Everything I want…" the torn mouth of the spider demon was saying to Sesshomaru as it joined up along its ragged seams. "Everything I want is here, belonging to you! Why does it all belong to you?"

"You're a greedy lump of scum, Naraku," Sesshomaru hissed. "You have always had so much – clever and beautiful children, your princedom, your people – but they were never enough for you – you always had to lust after what someone else had!"

"It will all be mine!" the spider lord declared, spewing a shocking blaze of poison from his mouth like a nightmarishly thick and long spider's web filament, separating the brothers. Sacrificing four of his tentacles, he snatched at the Tetsusaiga's blade with two of them and at the armoury sword with another two. This damaged his limbs badly, but he succeeded in lifting the Tetsusaiga and the armoury sword up along with the dog demons gripping their hilts. To Sesshomaru's frustration, the armoury blade was not strong enough to withstand the force Naraku was exerting on it, and as it bent out of shape, he was forced to release it and watch Naraku absorb it into his body.

Another long limb made to lash around the prince's form, but Inuyasha wrenched the Tetsusaiga free, slashing through the two tentacles holding the blade. However, he was unable to avoid the approaching appendage which smacked smartly against the flat of the blade and sent it flying away from him.

"You changed when you lost your sword the last time. Let's see you take your gorgeous demon shape again, shall we?" Naraku taunted, reaching for Inuyasha with every one of his terrifying, snake-like limbs.

As Inuyasha backed away, hacking at the tentacles with his claws, Sesshomaru dived for the Tetsusaiga, lodged in the ground not far from him. He uttered a silent prayer to the gods to and to his father, almost the same way Inuyasha had prayed for permission to use the Tenseiga, even though he had known nothing of the desperation of his brother's plea to their father's spirit.

 _Father, I covet this sword no more, but I beg you to allow me to wield it in my brother's defence – please, Father. For him, not for me…_

To his relief, as he seized the hilt of the sword, it did not burn him fiercely as it had in the past, and did not reject him, but flared to life. It allowed him to wield it as he flew between Inuyasha and Naraku, and swung so powerful a blow at Naraku that the spider lord was once again shredded.

"Have you got his heart this time?" Inuyasha called.

"Damn it, no!" Sesshomaru snarled, seeing the body reform again.

Was there no end to the spider lord's regenerative ability? It seemed not, for Naraku had so many souls, bodies and powers absorbed into his compound being that he was able to draw on each of those stolen strengths, one after the other, in order to heal his wounds. How many hundreds of demons were inside him? Was that how many times they would have to tear him apart to keep him down? Could they last that long?

"Use the Tetsusaiga again – you can deliver much stronger blows than I can!" Inuyasha told his brother.

"No, Inuyasha," Sesshomaru said, returning the blade to his brother at once. "The sword is yours."

"But you're unarmed!"

"I have the Tenseiga, remember?"

"Which can't cut Naraku!"

"No, but perhaps it can clear out some of the souls inside him!"

With that, Sesshomaru drew Tenseiga and launched himself in a streak of white lightning at Naraku, slashing at and through him to get at whatever inside him was a stolen soul or borrowed spirit.

Naraku howled with rage as he felt several of the powers he had stolen from others die as their spirits were dispersed by the fang that could cut no flesh. "Wretched dog!" he shrieked, wrapping a raft of tentacles around Sesshomaru's body, until Inuyasha could barely see his brother, save for the locks of silver hair spilling out from between the coils of the terrible limbs.

"You will NOT hurt him again!" Inuyasha bellowed, flying at the spider lord and splitting his main body in half, an easier task now that so many of those limbs were occupied with Sesshomaru.

The Tetsusaiga, alas, was too hefty a sword to efficiently probe Naraku's body for his heart, and Inuyasha found himself hacking away as if wielding an axe – a blunt instrument in search of one tiny object.

"Why won't you just _die?_ " he grunted furiously, plunging his blade through the body again, without finding its hoped-for target.

Then new tentacles grew, and he had to dodge them and leap away. He was about to jump in again to try and free Sesshomaru when a stunning blaze of white light bloomed within the tentacles holding the demon lord. To everyone's amazement, Naraku's tentacles crumbled away like dust from Sesshomaru's form, and the great dog demon sprang free, holding not one sword but two – in two whole, perfect arms.

Inuyasha's jaw dropped. Sesshomaru's lost arm had returned… along with a strange new sword no one had ever seen before, an elegant length of shining demon metal and a perfectly formed hilt of a mysterious wood-and-metal-like substance. What was more, that new sword was destroying every part of Naraku's body that it had touched – and those portions in turn ravaged the parts they were connected to.

Naraku gasped as he realised what was happening. With his own hands, he severed all his affected tentacles to stop the rot.

Sesshomaru flew at him once more with his new sword before him, and Naraku met him with more tentacles to keep him away from his primary body, sacrificing those again by tearing them off at their roots before the devastation could spread to his core.

"Damn you, dog!" the spider demon growled, generating yet more tentacles to keep him at bay.

Inuyasha saw his chance. He drove a vicious blast of the Tetsusaiga's demonic energy straight at Naraku, careful to avoid Sesshomaru, and shattered what remained of the spider lord's body. Sesshomaru spotted the exposed heart and flew straight at it, only to be blocked by one of Naraku's previously absorbed demon bodies, which sprang out from one of the shredded pieces of flesh.

The new sword laid waste to that form, and to another, and to another, each one throwing itself between Naraku's heart and the dangerous new blade.

"He's got too many beings inside him!" Inuyasha called. "They're endless!"

"NO! IT ENDS NOW!" boomed a shockingly loud voice from behind the brothers, stunning everyone within a mile of the forest patch.

Sesshomaru and Inuyasha leaped clear of Naraku and gained a safe distance before turning in astonishment towards where Bokusen'o had fallen earlier, only to see the incredible sight of their tree-demon godfather erect and in one piece again, looking stronger than he ever had before. Totosai and Lady Shirakumo stared up at him with equal wonder.

"Bokusen'o… and the sacred tree?" Inuyasha gasped, hardly able to believe his eyes, for there before him was his tree-demon godfather with a strange glow about him – a mysterious glow in which Inuyasha seemed to see the shape of the sacred tree from the village. And deep within the brightest part of that incomprehensible aura was a lithe figure of great beauty, a vision Inuyasha had not seen in at least thirty years.

Kikyo. Kikyo in her prime, in her youth, whose striking loveliness had won the favour of humans and demons alike, and even of the gods, for all he knew. Kikyo's spirit, right there with the holy tree and Bokusen'o, merging them, giving them strength, giving them harmony.

Legend became reality as the figure of the beautiful priestess, like that of the priestess of myth, sent up from her delicate hands a rainbow of shards – not the evil glass shards of Kanna's mirror, but the pure shards of the ancient sacred jewel whose story had passed into tales that for thousands of years had seemed like nothing more than fantasy.

As Naraku's reforming body watched with horror, the two blended trees gathered the sacred shards up in their branches and fired them in a hailstorm of crystal at the spider lord. The countless shards ripped through Naraku, causing him agonies of pain like the horror he had felt when the holy tree had ended his attempt to violate the young Kikyo, only this was multiplied by a thousand times. The crystal needles pulverised his flesh, purifying him in a million pinpoints of pain that seemed to his dying being to last forever, shooting through all his multiple forms at once, firing through his heart, his limbs, his head, shattering his bones and crushing his eyes, turning every inch of his compound body into ashes. Purified ashes. Ashes so pure and fine that they dispersed like powder in a storm.

The shards then flew like a million drops of the purest rainwater towards the horizon in every direction, scattering throughout the world again as people said they had done tens of thousands of years ago, seeking evil bodies and souls to turn to good, and finding living creatures everywhere to impart wisdom to. Like the demon lord who, not so long ago, had felt a pure and mysterious pain needling his heart when he had tried to damage the brother he eventually came to love, those touched by the new burst of these sacred shards would have a chance to change themselves for the better.

Inuyasha stared at Naraku's dispersing ashes, purified forever. Then he slowly turned to gaze at Bokusen'o, alive and well, with the halo-like vision of the tree sacred to the gods around him, and Kikyo's spirit in the heart of that vision. The beautiful priestess was looking at him with a smile of such peace and contentment that for as long as he lived, Inuyasha's heart would always be warmed whenever he saw that smile in his memory.

Then the vision of the sacred tree and the priestess faded, and only Bokusen'o remained, standing tall and mighty once more.

Inuyasha rushed up to his godfather and wrapped his arms around his trunk, pressing his face to the bark and whispering: "I thought you were dead… I was so afraid… I'm so glad you're all right."

"That root of mine is still at the village," Bokusen'o explained. "The tree sacred to the gods was able to lend me its power, and heal me along with the spirit of your priestess, who gave us the ancient shards."

"How? I don't understand," Inuyasha murmured, hardly caring what the explanation was. He only knew that Bokusen'o was well, Sesshomaru was well, Kikyo was at peace, they were all fine.

"I once speculated that the tree sacred to the gods must have acquired its power and holy aura because it had been touched by a shard of the sacred jewel long ago," the tree demon spoke. "I thought it mere legend, but perhaps legends are born in truth. Perhaps the spirit of your priestess, who was always so close to the tree, was able to turn the shard within the tree into many shards. Maybe it was like the mirror shards' ability to replicate, only this was for good, not for evil."

"I'm just so happy you're alive," Inuyasha said.

Then he turned around and reached out for Sesshomaru's perfect new fingers.

"Before you ask how _this_ happened, I had better declare that I do not know," the demon lord stated, caressing his brother's hair with his other hand.

" _I_ know," Totosai said smugly, looking very impressed with Sesshomaru's new arm and sword.

"Well?" Inuyasha demanded.

"Your new sword was born of your own demon power, Sesshomaru," their fire demon godfather explained. "The natural magical process of forming that sword also made the rest of your body whole, allowing you to regrow your arm. It was prompted by your readiness to return the Tetsusaiga to your brother even in the heat of battle, proving once and for all that you have acknowledged the sword as his, and no longer require it to make the most of yourself. That was when your full powers were unlocked, and those powers have given you an exquisite blade of your own. If it had taken you a hundred years to fully yield the Tetsusaiga to your brother, then it would have taken a hundred years to grow your new arm and sword; but because you reached this stage so soon after losing your arm, you have been rewarded by not having to live too long with a missing limb. You need no longer rely on your father's power, for you have exceeded his strength."

Sesshomaru absorbed the information with dignity, as always, but that dignity was tinged by a delicate new humility. He thanked Totosai for his guidance, and Bokusen'o for all he had done for them. He bowed formally to both his godfathers and his mother, then turned to Inuyasha.

"I'd still have liked you with one arm, you know," the half-demon whispered playfully.

"I know. But I'm glad to have two, so I can hold you better."

He slipped both his arms around Inuyasha and drew him into an embrace of the kind they had not enjoyed in the longest time – a hold of comfort and pure love in a safe place, in the heart of security and peace.


	47. Looking To The Future

The castle staff who had fallen in the battle with Naraku and his puppets were resurrected by Tenseiga wherever the sword would bring them back. Some remained dead – those soldiers who had died at once when Naraku had first emerged in the gallery, and some the sword did not resurrect, for its own reasons.

Walls, doors and windows shattered in the chaos were repaired, and the parts of the boundary walls affected by the fiercest of the Tetsusaiga's blows during the fight with the real Naraku had to be rebuilt stone by stone.

The children, Jaken and the gardener were found safe in the forest, while non-combat staff who had scattered in terror returned to their posts, many to be treated for injuries.

After all the reports had been made and accounts of the incident put on record, all that remained was to deal with the person who had opened the portal for the monster.

Kazuki knelt before Lord Sesshomaru, Inuyasha, Lady Shirakumo, the ministers and officials gathered in the throne room, knowing that the laws dictated severe punishment for bringing harm to the people of the castle. Natsumi had submitted her plea for mercy, offering to take some of the blame because the mistake had been made for her sake.

The raccoon demon made his formal statement before the assembly, from the place on the floor where he knelt: "Nothing can ever undo my mistake. The ones who remain dead can never come back, and their families have lost those precious to them. I can only ask forgiveness from my lord, from the souls of the lost soldiers, and from those who loved them, without daring to hope that forgiveness will be given. I dare not ask for mercy, but I wish it to be known that I acted not out of wickedness, but because I was deceived. If I have any power to do for the soldiers' families what little I can do to relieve their suffering, I will gladly do it, and more."

The Minister for Law and the head of security also presented their findings and their statement: "Although the investigation has found to its satisfaction that no malice was intended by the demon who opened the portal for Naraku, the law still considers such an act and its effects treasonous, and punishable by death."

Natsumi, standing to one side with the other attendants, started to cry quietly. Inuyasha and everyone else scented her tears, although she did not make a sound.

Kazuki bowed his forehead to the ground, then stated: "I accept the sentence."

Sesshomaru looked coolly at the figure crouched on the floor before the dais of the throne, and considered the matter carefully. Lives had been lost that need not have been taken. If they had only contained Naraku in the portal, no one in this castle would have died. Still…

"Inuyasha, what do you think?" Sesshomaru asked, to the surprise of everyone present.

"I know what I think, but I'm not sure you want to hear it," Inuyasha replied boldly. "So before I say it, I should ask if you're asking just for the sake of it, or if you're going to act on it."

Sesshomaru rose from his throne and stood beside Inuyasha before addressing the assembly: "When I allowed myself to be seized by Naraku, I was lost to this land. A king who does what I did then has in effect given up his right to rule. At that moment, I surrendered authority to my brother Inuyasha to rule this kingdom, and told him so. I have not yet taken back that authority. So my brother and mate-to-be is the one whose word will be law in this matter, and in all other matters until he chooses to yield that authority to me, if he chooses."

A surprised murmur erupted around the room. Inuyasha gaped at his brother until he realised that gaping like a fool was not very prince-like behaviour, nor would it inspire confidence in onlookers.

So he closed his mouth, straightened his shoulders, took in the painfully hopeful look Natsumi was giving him, and cleared his throat before addressing the ministers and officials.

"Ahem… while it is true that Sesshomaru told me to rule these lands well, I have not for one second regarded that as anything other than a statement made in temporary madness. I therefore return all authority to him."

Natsumi's face fell, but Inuyasha had not finished speaking yet.

"I do, however, want to say – as someone my lord, brother and mate-to-be considers sensible enough to rule these lands – that it is good wherever possible to carry out the spirit of the law within reason, and not to always rigidly follow the letter of the law. The lives of those lost are precious, but so is the life of the one before us. Kazuki acted out of concern and love, not treasonous intent. And wouldn't you say, my chosen mate, that more than one among us has recently done some genuinely _stupid_ things for love?"

As an undercurrent of approval spread around the room, Inuyasha eyed Sesshomaru keenly, daring him to contradict him, or to deny that his sacrificing himself to Naraku had not been an act of the greatest love and also the greatest foolish impulsiveness.

Sesshomaru gazed back at him for many seconds, then turned to the assembly and pronounced his verdict: "While the assistant chef's act may superficially have been punishable by death, I am more than satisfied that no treason was intended. Acts of love – even foolish ones – should not be punished with death. Nonetheless, demons loyal to us have died for that mistake, and my sentence for Kazuki is that he should personally beg forgiveness from and make recompense to each of the families who have forever lost their children, mates and parents in these battles. He will be guarded on these visits so that he will not be harmed by them in their anger, but he will have to give them the time, the payment, a humble listening ear whether they choose to abuse him or pour out their unhappiness to him, or any other help they may demand, for as long as they demand it. In addition, the soldiers will be given the same honours as those who give their lives to defend our land in wars. My own treasury will ensure that the families of the demons lost will continue to receive the salary they have been drawing. This will continue until their children mature, or until their mates find new mates, or until their younger siblings have made their way in the world and are able to take over from their lost older siblings in providing for the elders of their family."

Natsumi was crying again, but in gratitude and happiness this time, and Kazuki could only touch his forehead to the ground again and thank his lord and his prince.

"'Genuinely stupid'?" Sesshomaru asked Inuyasha under his breath as they strode out of the throne room.

"Try telling me you weren't," Inuyasha shot back in a whisper.

"I'll tell you exactly that when we are back in our bedroom, but of course you will refuse to believe me."

"At least you're not too stupid to know _that_."

…

The weeks that followed were so busy that each day seemed to merge into the next, and the next.

First, they ensured that all was well with the village, and personally thanked Kaede, Kagome and the rest of the villagers for their help and hospitality. A special thanks was said to the great tree for the part it had played in saving Inuyasha, healing Bokusen'o and destroying Naraku.

Then Inuyasha travelled north to visit his mother's grave with Sesshomaru by his side, to pay his respects and whisper to her that he was happy and well now. The human descendants of his mother's sisters, brothers and cousins watched the demons curiously and fearfully from afar, wondering why the king of these lands, the prince, and their intimidating guards were at the grave of some long-dead, obscure relative of theirs who, as far as they knew, had left no children, and of whom nothing was ever spoken in their family.

Two entire human generations had come and gone since Inuyasha had last lived in this area. He recognised none of these relations of his, and they did not know him.

"Do you wish to speak with them?" Sesshomaru asked him.

"No," he said quietly. "Let them live in peace for now, without having to remember unhappy old stories from their grandparents' past. Maybe in another generation's time, I can tell them who I am."

The week after that, they received and officially recognised a small delegation sent by the Lady Kagura, carefully hand-picked by her from among respectable spider-demon families and clans which had opposed Naraku. Border troubles had ceased for the bird-demon kingdom and Sesshomaru's southern lands since Kagura had restored order in the princedom through her fair and capable but steely rule. She had also sent a private letter for Sesshomaru and Inuyasha to say that Hakudoshi was coming along well and looking very promising. Byakuya still needed to be watched carefully, but now that their father was gone for good, he appeared resigned to working in harmony with his remaining siblings.

The delegation brought with them Sesshomaru's two-headed dragon and its stable mate, which had carried the rescue party into the spider-demon territories. The dragons bore the four sculptures Minister Atsushi had given Naraku, which Kagura wished to return to him. Kagura's letter also stated that she had decided to give her town house to Natsumi so that the racoon demoness and her mate-to-be would have a place to call their own. In a coda at the very end of the letter, the new ruler of the spider-demon lands added this line, written in a much less formal manner than the foregoing sentences: "Ah, Sesshomaru, one of your subjects has just made his way across the border into my lands, begging to see me – and it is none other than the obedient Mamoru. He is asking to remain with me as my servant, my slave, my footstool, my whatever. If you have no need of him in your lands, I could do with a new piece of furniture, as the rest was wrecked in the battle!"

Other delegations from tribes who had heard of the troubles caused by Naraku arrived, bearing their leaders' renewed vows of friendship and loyalty to Sesshomaru, a mark of their confidence in him.

Celebrations were held to mark the upcoming mating ceremony between the demon lord and the prince, and the castle was filled with laughter, music, endless swirls of bright garments, visitors bearing precious gifts along with goodwill and curiosity about the prince, and more good food and drink than Inuyasha had seen in his entire life.

At last, the day came for Sesshomaru to officially take Inuyasha as his first, highest-ranking mate. Among demons, mating arrangements were normally done with little fuss, and privately acknowledged within the family or small tribe. They were usually quite unlike the rituals for human weddings. But for royal demons, the arrangements were far more elaborate.

The day began with the public ceremonies, to which many guests were invited, for much feasting and drinking. Not much was required of Sesshomaru and Inuyasha other than to sit at the heart of the celebrations, look grandly dressed and flawlessly groomed, receive the congratulations and best wishes of all who approached them, and eat and drink along with their guests, who included the Lady Kagura, Queen Abi, Ambassador Tsubasa, Prince Koga and many other tribe leaders friendly to the dog demons.

All who had never met Inuyasha were curious to see for themselves the half-demon whose fame had spread far and wide as the beautiful and courageous prince who had rescued his brother and mate-to-be at the risk of his own life, when he could simply have abandoned him and taken the throne for himself.

Not only demons were present. Kaede, Kagome, the village headman, and a few of the villagers Inuyasha was closer to were also there, well looked after by Yuno and Jaken.

At noon, while the majority of the guests continued to be entertained by food, music, spectacular dancing and acrobatics, visits to the nearby town, or tours of the gardens and repaired art galleries, the main players quietly moved on to the next part of the mating ceremony. This was a semi-private affair, with the ministers, elders and chieftains of the dog demon tribe, family members and close friends witnessing the formalities involved in sealing a mating agreement.

Inuyasha had been calm and at ease during the public part of the celebrations, but he was starting to get a little nervous now. He truly began to feel the seriousness of the ceremony when he walked out to the edge of the forest patch where a large arbour of trees and flowering plants had been carefully transplanted and coaxed into shape by the gardeners over the past weeks, so that they were sheltered by intertwining branches, twigs and tendrils above them. Flowering plants lent their brightness and colour to the open-sided structure.

Natsumi and several assistant attendants had changed Inuyasha's robes to a splendid formal set of such brilliant whiteness, with discreet deep-gold embroidery on it, that it dazzled the eyes under the noon sun and matched Sesshomaru's predominantly gold robe with its cloudy, silver-white patterns.

Sesshomaru's breath caught as Inuyasha walked into the arbour, his perfect attire bringing out all his natural beauty and making his golden eyes look brighter and wider than they had ever looked. The hair on the top and sides of his head had been swept back and bound, and his sidelocks braided and drawn back to join the bound portion, their remaining length braided with gold thread to rest over the perfectly combed, silky mane falling loose to his waist. He looked like a warrior, prince and beauty all in one. Peeking out from under his neatly combed fringe, encircling his forehead, was a decorative, light gold chain which held a gold crescent moon to the middle of his brow, a mark of his union with a mate who had such a marking.

Inuyasha, for his part, thought his heart had stopped when he looked upon Sesshomaru's regal bearing. The demon lord was a living sculpture of pure snow clad in flowing threads of gold and clouds of flawless whiteness, with the face of a god. Images flashed in Inuyasha's mind of how far they had come since the time they had hated each other, and showed him just how well things had turned out for both of them.

The couple bowed to Lady Shirakumo, a properly dressed Totosai, Bokusen'o – who had actually uprooted himself and walked out to the edge of the forest patch to witness the ceremony – and to the ministers, dog-demon chieftains and their friends, and received their synchronised bows in return. Then all except Bokusen'o knelt on mats positioned on the grass.

At the end of the arbour nearest to Bokusen'o were Lady Shirakumo, Totosai and Kaede, facing inwards. Sesshomaru and Inuyasha knelt before them, also looking inward. In front of the couple, facing them, were the ministers, dog-demon chieftains and close friends, including Kagura, Kagome, Jaken, and Prince Koga, whom Inuyasha did not know well, but who was a faithful old ally of Sesshomaru's. Their most trusted attendants, Isshin and Natsumi, knelt to one side of the arbour.

Lady Shirakumo, as Sesshomaru's mother, had the honour of addressing this more intimate gathering.

"From days of old," she began, in her clear, calm voice. "The strongest and most powerful demons have had the privilege of choosing mates for their offspring from within the family, because they have never needed external mating alliances to obtain power or security. But that is not the only reason for showing off a sibling-mate, because even commoners practise such arrangements when they are content with their lot and seek few ties beyond their immediate circles. I am instead pleased to say that my son, Sesshomaru, has chosen his half-brother Inuyasha as his mate not to display the power of our family, or its insularity, but for love, and because he is the best mate he could possibly have. I am equally pleased to say that Inuyasha has accepted Sesshomaru not because he needs any greater strength or power, but also for love, and because he too believes that Sesshomaru is the best mate he could have.

"I have often thought that the ability to freely and unselfishly give love was a quality lacking in many demons, including myself, and that we would do well to learn this instinct from humans. But over the past two hundred years, ever since my former mate gave his life for his human mate and their child, I have seen how demons can love truly, and love well, and I am more satisfied than I know how to express in words that my son and his brother have learnt to love from their deepest hearts and souls.

"I have also thought, over these two hundred years, that we demons have too often failed to regard our human… friends… as just that – friends, and we have frequently failed to do right by those who blend demon and human blood within them. I must confess with regret that I have in the past consumed humans while in my animal form. It is my hope that this union between my son Sesshomaru and his half-demon brother will be among the developments that change things in our societies."

Kagome's eyes had widened till they were about the size of saucers when the lady made her admission about eating humans, but she calmed herself and listened quietly as the queen continued with her speech.

"…I wish to observe that when demons of our dog tribe choose as first mates those of the same sex as themselves, they are declaring that they have chosen them not for the purpose of getting heirs, but because they deeply wish to be bonded with them," Lady Shirakumo spoke on. "My son desires to take a step beyond than that. He wants to state that by taking his brother as his first mate, he is declaring that his rights are Inuyasha's rights too, and that if he himself does not have children through a female, any children Inuyasha may have with a female will be fully entitled to succeed to the throne. All that and more makes this mating union a very significant one in my eyes, and I believe, in the eyes of others. That it promises too to be a most interesting and possibly temperamental union – but most of all a happy one – only adds more blessings to what is already an excellent choice that these two before us have made.

"Demons have far fewer rites and rituals associated with mating than humans do, but because my new son-in-law wishes to honour his human heritage as well, we would be most honoured if the priestess Kaede, one of his dearest friends, would also bless this ceremony for them, and for us."

 _So your mother can make sensible speeches when she wants to!_ was the message conveyed by the sideway look Inuyasha shot Sesshomaru.

 _Apparently. Now be still – you and I are not supposed to talk during this ceremony,_ was the message that Sesshomaru's eyes returned.

Kaede had risen and was now kneeling in front of them, facing them, and speaking some rites which made little sense to Sesshomaru but which Inuyasha found familiar, having heard human priests, monks, priestesses and village chiefs recite such lines before to bless the marriages of newlyweds.

Kaede then turned to the assembled ministers, chieftains and friends, and said wisely: "The rites of human and demon societies are necessarily different, but the spirit behind them is the same for all happy occasions – we offer good wishes, hopes for the longevity of the couple and their union, blessings so that the union will be a smooth and harmonious one, and we ask the gods that the union may be completed with children. Some demon unions may create children differently from the way humans do, but the wishes are the same good ones for those children, and for the generations to come."

She bowed to the couple and to all present, and they echoed her wishes for Sesshomaru and Inuyasha and their long future together.

They rejoined the remainder of the guests for further public celebrations which spilled out across the castle grounds and even into the town, where the townsfolk were marking the special occasion with festive decorations, gatherings and much feasting and drinking. Sesshomaru and Inuyasha, and the representatives from the village, were quietly pleased to think that the village of the tree sacred to the gods was enjoying its own celebrations too, for a vast quantity of excellent food and wine had been sent over by dragon, along with generous gifts in return for the humble but thoughtful wedding presents the villagers had put together for them.

When night fell, the guests continued with their entertainment while the family repaired first to the forest patch, and then to the royal wing for the final and most private part of the ceremony. It was also the simplest part, where Lady Shirakumo as the mother of Sesshomaru, and Bokusen'o and Totosai as the godfathers of the brothers, declared their acknowledgement of the union.

In the forest patch, Bokusen'o said: "I acknowledge that my godsons have taken each other as mates," and his words were echoed by Totosai.

Lady Shirakumo then returned to the royal wing with the brothers, and said at the door of the chamber that had once been their father's bedroom: "I acknowledge that my son has taken a first mate, and I recognise Inuyasha as his first mate."

With that, the official seal on their union was stamped, and Lady Shirakumo returned to the party downstairs to play hostess, leaving the new mates to be helped out of their formal outer wear by their attendants, and then to be left alone together.

…

"Do you think Father would be happy to see us here together, as mates, in his old room?" Inuyasha asked Sesshomaru when they were by themselves in the large chamber at the end of the corridor, which they had decided to take over as their new, shared bedroom.

"I think he would be very happy," Sesshomaru said, caressing Inuyasha's hair, which was now hanging loose, but still slightly wavy from the braids and threads it had been held in for so much of the day. "Look at the swords."

They glanced over at the fine teakwood table on one side of the room, upon which rested Tetsusaiga, Tenseiga and Sesshomaru's own sword. Totosai had declared that his eldest godson's sword was to be named Bakusaiga, the "Crushing Fang" – to match the other two weapons – even though this newest addition to the family of dog-demon blades had not been forged from a tooth.

"Father blessed us by allowing you to wield the sword he left me, and allowing me to wield the sword he left you. I think he would be very pleased to see us here together as mates, and equals," Sesshomaru explained, as they sat side by side at the foot of the bed.

"I think you're right."

"I know I am."

"About that 'equals' bit, you actually told your mother to declare in public that your rights are my rights, and that my children will have the throne if you don't have any? I thought that would just be a private understanding between us," Inuyasha remarked.

"You don't mind, do you?" Sesshomaru asked.

"No. I was just surprised that you'd say so in front of all the ministers and chieftains," Inuyasha replied, playing with the sleeve of Sesshomaru's under-robe.

"I want everyone to know that you are not only my mate, but my joint ruler, and that as my father's son, you and your descendants should be my heirs, if I have none of my own. In fact, what I most want to see is the children I have with a female of our choosing growing up to mate with the children you have with the same female, so that our lines will become one."

"I'd like that," Inuyasha smiled. "I wouldn't force it on them, but I hope at least some of our daughters from one father grow up to find at least some of our sons from the other father the best mates they could have. I just hope the fact that I have human blood doesn't make it hard for them to mate their own siblings – you know human blood doesn't do well in offspring of unions between close relatives, unlike demon blood."

"I have no doubt that our children, and their children, even if they mate humans in the future, will have the sense and learning to know what they can and cannot safely do. While I agree that _some_ of our behaviour in recent times, as well as further back in the past, has been quite stupid, I trust that our children will be cleverer."

"Hey, speak for yourself," Inuyasha teased, rocking his body to nudge Sesshomaru with the whole side of his body. "I think most of the stupidity came from you, y'know?"

Sesshomaru's response was to tackle Inuyasha to the mattress and tickle him, leaving Inuyasha breathless from the delightful agony of those merciless fingers sending him into paroxysms of near-silent laughter.

But he fought back until he was on top of Sesshomaru, and they were grappling hand-to-hand, nipping at each other's lips and jaws in a blend of foreplay and play-fighting. Robes were tugged off and fierce, hungry kisses exchanged. Inuyasha raked his fangs lightly over Sesshomaru's pale throat in a play at dominance, and to his surprise, Sesshomaru yielded to him. The demon lord turned his head to his right, allowing Inuyasha to press his teeth and lips against his jugular vein, and nibble at his shoulder.

Inuyasha growled with pleasure as Sesshomaru's hand slipped round the back of his head, encouraging him to continue along this path. As Inuyasha traced his claws and teeth over his shoulder and along his left arm, Sesshomaru turned over until he was lying on his belly, and looking seductively back at his mate. Inuyasha ran his fingers slowly down the length of Sesshomaru's spine and over the curve of his buttocks, hesitating.

"Well? What are you waiting for?" Sesshomaru purred deeply, seductively. "You know what to do – you must have learnt _something_ from me all this while..."

Inuyasha grinned and pounced, seizing the nape of Sesshomaru's neck between his teeth and pushing his hard, throbbing member against his mate's flawlessly formed, muscular bottom.

"Have I unleashed a wild little beast?" the demon lord murmured playfully, before melting under the demanding attentions of Inuyasha's teeth, lips and tongue. The skin over each bone of his spine was kissed and licked, and his back lightly massaged by strong thumbs and knuckles.

When Inuyasha reached the sensitive flesh over the small of his back, Sesshomaru drew in his breath sharply as his skin and muscles jumped involuntarily from the pleasurable sensations they were receiving. The next moment, he was gasping lightly as Inuyasha kneaded his flesh firmly before drizzling oil over him – oil which the younger of the two had assumed would be used by his brother on him, and not the other way around.

"You needn't prepare me any more than that," Sesshomaru whispered to his mate. "I can take whatever you give me."

"Are you sure?" Inuyasha asked, gliding up his body and kissing his ear, his cheek and what he could reach of his mouth.

"Yes, I'm sure," the demon lord replied, reaching a hand back to caress the prince's face and hold him there for a second, for just another kiss.

The erotic novelty of being on top, given free rein on the night of their mating ceremony to take the dominant part with this lord and older brother of his who had always led the way in the bedroom, gave Inuyasha a thrill. He mounted Sesshomaru and carefully, slowly, penetrated him, longing to rush ahead but having learnt from his mate's example that he must be patient and take his time.

It felt intriguing, wrapping his arms around Sesshomaru from behind as he pushed in slowly, ever so slowly, feeling his mate admit one inch of him, and another, then clench his muscles so that he was gripped tightly enough to make him moan into that maddeningly silky length of hair.

"Sess…" he groaned, feeling his partner release him a little so he could push in further, then grip him again. He slipped more oil on, moved in a bit more, out a bit, and in again, until he could hold back no longer. He began thrusting freely while feeling the most heavenly tautness enclosing him, channeling pure bliss from that key point of contact throughout his entire body.

"Yes… you're doing it perfectly," Sesshomaru whispered, turning his head to kiss one of Inuyasha's hands, which was clutching his arm firmly, holding him in place as he worked in and out of him.

"You're trying to squeeze the life out of me, aren't you?" Inuyasha grunted, tightening his embrace of Sesshomaru while nibbling on his shoulder, coming deliciously close to climaxing.

"Oh, Inuyasha," Sesshomaru growled back. "I haven't _started_ squeezing yet…"

Then Inuyasha found himself wrapped so tightly inside Sesshomaru that his breath caught, and he held that breath seemingly endlessly as he came hard, shooting his seed into Sesshomaru, raptured by wave after wave of heady pleasure, till at last he exhaled with a cry and melted into Sesshomaru's muscular back.

There they lay, as one, for long seconds that seemed to drift into an infinity of peace and contentment in which time did not exist. The spell broke only when Inuyasha stirred, and the demon lord reached over his shoulder, smiling when one of his mate's furry ears twitched as his fingers brushed it. Inuyasha rested there for a minute more before slipping off his back onto the mattress, cracking his eyes open to look into his brother's face.

"How come _you're_ in charge even when I'm on top of you?" the younger one murmured a little sulkily to the elder.

"It wasn't my intention to take charge," Sesshomaru replied, shifting closer to him. "I said you were my equal – and I mean that to be true in private, not only in front of others. Are you annoyed with me?"

"What will you do if I am?"

"I'll let you chain me to the bed and do with me whatever you please."

"You're such a kink."

"Regretting going through the ceremony already, are you?"

"Ha," Inuyasha chuckled. " I guess all this is just typical of the way we are with each other."

"Do you think so?"

"It's nice playing at dominating you and all that, but I think I have a lot more fun when you're top dog," Inuyasha grinned.

"Hmm…" Sesshomaru rolled out a throaty growl as he covered Inuyasha with his body and pinned him to the sheets. "Good thing then that it's my turn now…"

…

Sesshomaru awoke in the darkness before the dawn, Inuyasha's scent all over him, imparting to him a feeling of cosiness and warmth. But his mate was not in the bed they were to share for the rest of their lives – their father's bed – in a room recently redecorated to reflect both their personalities.

He looked towards the nearest open window and saw that well-loved head, with its distinctive puppy ears, silhouetted against the deep-purple, starlit sky. He rose, drew along with him one of the light sheets covering the bed, and went over to the window to stand behind Inuyasha, wrapping himself and his mate in the sheet.

"Why aren't you in bed?" he whispered into one furry ear. "You're not thinking of leaping out the window and running away from me, are you?"

"Hmm… would you run after me if I did?" Inuyasha whispered back, kissing his hand.

"To the ends of the earth, and into the world beyond."

"You wouldn't let me get away, would you?"

"No. Do you regret taking me as a mate while you're still so young? You aren't even officially mature yet, in demon terms."

"Hey, I think we've established that I'm _plenty_ mature," Inuyasha returned, nudging Sesshomaru with his elbow.

"Oh, that's really mature of you," Sesshomaru teased.

"You're so silly – of course I don't regret mating you, and I'm not thinking of running away. I'm happy. Really happy. I'm just looking out into the night."

"What do you see out there?"

"Nothing at all that compares with what's in here with me," Inuyasha answered, turning his head for a kiss, which Sesshomaru lovingly gave him.

Then they stood by the window, scenting the nature of the night, watching the world of darkness with their keen demon eyes, each enjoying the closeness of the other – so close they almost felt they could merge into one. It seemed like no time at all before the sun rose over the horizon and saw them into a fresh new day, the first of many, many more they would spend together in the thousands of precious years that waited patiently to welcome them.


	48. Epilogue: Ever After

"I beg your pardon, my lord. I did not know you would be up so early," Natsumi's gentle voice came from the doorway. Her arms were full of clean, folded linen. "Shall I come back later?'

"No. Do what you must," Sesshomaru answered tersely from the desk in his old bedroom, where he had been alone for the past hour, working.

But as she moved quietly about the room, neatly putting bedlinen and clothes into the wardrobes, Sesshomaru could hear Inuyasha's voice in his head, reminding him to be nicer to people.

"My mate missed your presence yesterday," he remarked a little awkwardly, after cracking his head for something "nice" to say to their deputy head attendant, who had been capably assisting Isshin in many areas of responsibility since her promotion to this position some thirty years back.

"Oh," Natsumi said, surprised at being spoken to without being given an order. "It was my day off, my lord, but I found myself rather sorry not to be here instead, for the children were very trying at home."

"Are your two youngest here with you today?" Sesshomaru asked, scenting fresh traces of her children on her clothing, and even fresher hints of Kazuki.

"Yes, my lord, their father has taken them to the crèche."

"Hmm."

Creating a crèche for the younger castle children had been an idea of Inuyasha's. He had seen that Satoshi, who had become chief healer upon Yoshi's death from old age nine years ago, was getting much too busy to have a troupe of small children tagging along with him whenever they were done with their formal lessons.

Natsumi gathered up in her arms the rest of the linen which was meant for Inuyasha's old bedroom, bobbed a quick bow to Sesshomaru, and walked quietly over to the room next door to continue with her work.

Alone again in his old bedroom – which he had partly converted into an office so that he could do his work within the royal wing at odd hours without disturbing Inuyasha's rest – Sesshomaru stifled an impatient sigh as he finished reading one report only to find more proposals and requests at the bottom of the pile. Though his ministers had taken much work off his shoulders over the years, some things still had to be personally handled by him.

Such as the request he was looking at now: the matter of Satoshi asking permission to take as his mate the dog demoness known as Momoka, Mamoru's sister from the housekeeping department. Ordinarily, when castle staff wished to take each other as mates, only their families and immediate superiors needed to be notified, and Sesshomaru and Inuyasha would be kept informed in general reports.

But now that Satoshi was chief healer, he reported directly only to the two demon lords of these lands.

Sesshomaru should have looked at these reports and requests yesterday. However he and Inuyasha had been so carried away with their sparring that they had spent the entire afternoon out in the field, clashing blades until Bokusen'o had roared at them to stop before they killed each other by accident – or worse, cracked his ancient trunk with a misplaced blow!

Their aggressive combat training reflected the nature of their pairing: passionate and often argumentative, but honest and uncompromising. Sesshomaru sat back in his chair as it sank in that he and Inuyasha had been mates for half a century now.

Fifty years of fierce fights and unquestioned loyalty to each other; fifty years of disagreement and harmony; fifty years of excitement and routine; mature discussions and childish jokes; peace and chaos; quiet respect and merciless teasing; times when they misunderstood each other to a ridiculous extent and times when they could almost read each other's minds. And love. Always love.

He wanted to slip back into bed with his mate, before they had to go downstairs for breakfast with his mother, who was visiting them.

Which was why he sighed now as he ploughed through the paperwork he should have completed before this day dawned. He did not want to look at it; he wanted to snuggle up to Inuyasha. It wasn't good enough to be in the same wing, just down the corridor from him. He wanted to be in the same bed, even in the same space his mate occupied, if only that were physically possible. He had not believed before embarking on life as Inuyasha's mate that he could truly desire only one person, and constantly seek to explore and enjoy more and more of that one person, for years, without growing bored.

Yet, here he was, still besotted with his brother-mate, still faithful to him despite their occasional squabbles, and perfectly pleased to be so. As that satisfying realisation dawned on him, he reached for his brush and seal and signed his approval for Satoshi and Momoka to become mates. That wolf had courted the bitch for more than long enough!

In the next instant, he nearly smeared all the ink in a wild gash across the document when a startlingly loud howl of terror exploded from the end of the royal wing.

Sesshomaru's heart almost stopped when he realised instantly that the howl had come from Inuyasha. He hardly knew how, but in less than one second, he had flown out of his office-room, barrelled past an equally startled Natsumi rushing out of the room next door, past even the guards tearing towards the end of the passageway, and crashed through the door of his and Inuyasha's bedroom at nearly the same time that the two guards who were posted outside that same door charged in.

The picture that greeted him was one that he would never forget: Inuyasha, beautifully naked, mouth agape and face white with shock, standing in the middle of the room clutching a balled-up bedsheet to his groin to preserve his modesty, and Lady Shirakumo standing calmly by the rumpled and now-empty bed, holding a vial of something in her left hand. Her right eyebrow arched coolly in response to the sudden invasion of the room by eight royal wing guards, the first demon lord and the deputy chief attendant.

"Mother!" Sesshomaru roared. "What are you doing in this bedroom? What have you done to Inuyasha? Inuyasha, what has happened?"

"She – she – gaaah!" was all Inuyasha could splutter out as his furry ears, pressed flat against his hair, twitched furiously.

" _How_ did you get into the room, Mother?" Sesshomaru demanded, quickly draping a dressing gown around Inuyasha's creamy shoulders and stiffening as the scent of sex – at least, sex of a sort – registered with his thinking mind. "What the devil have you done to my mate?"

"What I ought to have done at least forty years ago," Lady Shirakumo sighed.

"What are you talking about?" Sesshomaru growled. "How did you get past the guards?"

"Let's continue this discussion in private," Lady Shirakumo suggested, looking around at the guards and Natsumi.

"Out, all of you," Sesshomaru ordered.

The staff bowed and exited briskly, shutting the door behind them.

"Mother?" Sesshomaru persisted, once he and Inuyasha were alone with her.

"How did I get in?" she echoed. "Silly boy – did you think that the secret passageway between your two old bedrooms was the only one in this wing?"

"Uh-h-h..." Inuyasha stuttered.

"Yes, darling," she purred, without waiting for him to utter a coherent word. "There's one between my room and this – your father and I had quite a lot of fun with it in the years before Sesshomaru came along. I've always been able to use it since I became your father's mate. So it was easy for me to come over, put a little spell on you to keep you asleep, then do what I needed to do."

"What you needed to do was _molest_ me?" Inuyasha yowled, finding his power of speech at last. "You were _stroking_ _my_ _dick_ when I woke up!"

"She was _what_?" Sesshomaru yelled. "Mother!"

"How else was I supposed to milk you of your seed?"

Inuyasha made a strange, strangled sound and looked rather as if he had just swallowed a large and unpleasant-tasting insect alive, while Sesshomaru seemed to have turned to stone.

"If your fast-improving magical defences hadn't broken my spell and woken you up, I would even have had time to insert your seed into my body," she continued.

"Aaaagh!" Inuyasha shouted, turning beetroot-red as the words came matter-of-factly out of the lady's mouth without so much as a blush gracing her snowy cheeks.

"Don't look at me like that!" Lady Shirakumo snapped, finally losing her cool. "You're the ones who've refused to glance at any of the females I've been parading past you for the last _fifty years_! I even asked that pretty young priestess from the village thirty years ago, remember, when she was still pretty and young? Oh yes, _I_ was willing to have half-demon or one-quarter-demon grandchildren – but she and the pair of you decided that it would not be good for the children's mother to die so long before they would. Yet, you wouldn't consider any of the demonesses! So there appears to be no other way for me to get grandchildren other than to bear them _myself_!"

"Y – y – you were going shove my... my _stuff_ up your... your _thingie_?" Inuyasha gasped in horror.

"I did consider going straight to the point and simply mounting you, but I was sufficiently considerate of my son's possessiveness with regard to his mate to refrain from that. Instead, I only used my hand and..."

"That is quite enough!" Sesshomaru thundered.

"Indeed it is quite enough!" Lady Shirakumo thundered back, in a full-blown temper now. "Fifty years I've been waiting for a grandchild, and that was after very nearly losing both of you forever to that accursed spider-lord. I have no intention of allowing my late cousin's and former mate's line to be lost thanks to the selfish behaviour of his sons! I theoretically might still have children of my own if you died, but your father is gone and cannot be brought back, and his line is _not_ to be lost!"

"We will not use your magic to create any artificial children, Mother," Sesshomaru growled, glaring at the smooth stone vial she held in her hand, which held Inuyasha's stolen seed. "You know our tribe's traditions better than that."

"This is not magic," Lady Shirakumo sniffed. "This is _medicine_. I've spent the last seven years researching medical methods of impregnating a female without requiring the male to have intercourse with her, as the two of you are so intent on remaining faithful to each other. And I've found good, safe, practical and effective methods of achieving the theoretical concepts which have been outlined by healers for many centuries now. There – does that make you happy? You can have children without having to sleep with a female."

Inuyasha's ears were still pressed down, but he was calmer now, and listening carefully.

"I have even found the perfect female," the lady continued. "A young cousin of mine from my kingdom, Usugumo – I mentioned her to you before, do you remember? She vowed to the gods that she would never take another mate after losing her only love to a duel of honour more than a hundred years ago. She had no children of her own with her late mate, but I have spoken to her of the two of you, and she is willing to bear children for you both, as long as she is not required to sleep with either of you. My medical methods are acceptable to her. She is powerful, beautiful and of noble blood. She will bear you strong children."

"Would she be willing to live in the castle with us while she carries our children, and even after they are born?" Inuyasha asked cautiously, not trusting his voice to come out normal after all his hysterical babbling of a few minutes ago.

"She has indicated that such an arrangement would be acceptable to her."

"What of her claim over the children?" Sesshomaru asked.

"She will be there for the children if they ever want advice and help from their birth mother, but their upbringing will be entirely left to their two fathers."

Sesshomaru turned to Inuyasha, gently combed his messy hair into place with his claws, and asked quietly: "What do you think?"

Inuyasha turned wide, thoughtful golden eyes onto his mate, and finally said with a hint of a smile: "It sounds good to me."

"And to me," Sesshomaru answered.

"So it's settled, then," Lady Shirakumo said firmly. "It had better _remain_ settled, or else I shall carry out my threat to bear my own grandchildren."

"Give that to me," Inuyasha snapped, snatching the vial of his seed out of her hand and going to the bathroom to pour its contents away as well as rinse it thoroughly, before trying to return it to her.

"Thank you, darling, but you had better keep the vial," she said. "It forms part of the medical equipment I'll need to complete the process. I shall send for Usugumo at once. When she is ready, one of you should fill that vial with your seed, then quickly hand it to me. I shall carry out the rest of the procedure with her. Which of you will be fathering the first child?"

"You go first," Inuyasha mumbled to Sesshomaru. "I'm still traumatised by having my seed 'milked' into that vial."

"Oh, but it was such a _pleasure_ getting my hands on you," Lady Shirakumo sighed.

Inuyasha turned interesting shades of pale and red all over again. "This is such a screwed-up family," he muttered.

...

The Duchess Usugumo was a strikingly beautiful dog demoness with very similar colouring to Lady Shirakumo and the brothers. Her eyes were a paler hue of gold, but her hair was pure white, and she had one pink stripe over each of her cheekbones. She had no markings on her brow.

She was cool and calm like her cousin the queen, but gentler and much more proper in her overall behaviour. What Sesshomaru and Inuyasha most liked about her was that she treated them both with respect without grovelling before them, made absolutely no distinction of Inuyasha's half-demon blood, and most important of all, had a kind nature which shone out through her demon aura.

"Are you certain that you are prepared to become the birth mother of children who will ultimately not belong to you?" Sesshomaru questioned, when they were all comfortably settled around a table laden with food and drink in Inuyasha's old bedroom.

"My lords," she replied steadily. "One of my greatest regrets was not having children with my mate before he died in a duel. Now that it is too late to bear his offspring, I have decided that I would like to help both of you bear yours, but as they will not be the children of the only one I have ever loved, I will stake no claim on them. I will be as much of a mother to them as they require, but you will be their true parents. I am ready to state before all the chieftains of our dog demon tribe and all the ministers of your kingdom and your lady mother's that I will not attempt to be more to the children than you would have me be, neither will I stake any claim on your throne or lands. I have no interest in such things, as those who have known me all my life will tell you."

"So, what are we waiting for?" Lady Shirakumo asked.

...

Usugumo's first pregnancy lasted the full eleven months typical for dog demons. As demons have longer lifespans than humans, most demon races also carry their children for longer than mortals do.

It had been decided among the family that she would bear Sesshomaru's child first.

Inuyasha might have repetitively grumbled more than a few times over the eleven months of the pregnancy that this really was a _very_ messed-up family, but when he and Sesshomaru at last held their firstborn child, a daughter, he was speechless with wonder for a few minutes.

As he carefully took her over from Sesshomaru and rocked her gently in his arms while a proud Lady Shirakumo looked on, he whispered in amazement: "I can't believe how tiny and beautiful she is. She's so perfect..."

The child snuggled against his chest, twitched her rosebud lips, and peeled her little eyes open just a crack to show the glimmer of deep gold. She was so fair that she seemed almost to be made of crystal – soft, snuggly, living crystal with faint magenta stripes over her plump cheeks and a diamond-like blue mark on her forehead. Sesshomaru stroked her amazingly fine white hair with his fingertips, careful not to let his claws touch her tender skin at all. He took a deep sniff of her unique scent.

She was his, all right, no question about it. His mother had worked a medical miracle.

"What shall we call her?" Inuyasha whispered, afraid to startle the baby.

"All the names we thought of before she was born – which one does she look most like?" Sesshomaru whispered back.

"Tsukiyo is a nice choice – she's luminous, like a moonlit night, so Tsukiyo should be it," Inuyasha decided.

"I like that."

A year later, Usugumo delivered Inuyasha's child, a boy, and his half-demon father fell in love all over again as he had with the first baby, the moment he looked down into that breathtakingly flawless face topped by a shock of white hair. A hint of one light-coloured stripe touched each chubby cheek. Unlike his sister, this infant forced his eyes open boldly and peered up at his two fathers out of rounded golden orbs that were so like Inuyasha's that Sesshomaru laughed.

The boy had no puppy ears, but regular demon ears at the sides of his head. Sesshomaru had hoped that Inuyasha's babies would have his furry dog ears, for he loved those twitching appendages on his mate's head; but Inuyasha was glad that his son would not have any sensitive, furry triangles atop his head to be pulled the way his had been when he was a child!

They named him Himizu, for despite his boldness and the impressive power of his demon aura, he was as calm and unruffled a baby as anyone had ever seen, like a crystal bowl of water cooled by ice.

"Look, Tsukiyo, this is your new baby brother," Inuyasha said to the girl, whom Sesshomaru was holding up, and who was staring fascinated at the newborn one. "When you grow up, if you prove to be the strongest of all the children that we have, then as the eldest child, you will rule this kingdom. And when you do, you had better be very, very good to your little brother from the very start, unlike your First Father with his _own_ little brother when he was smaller."

Sesshomaru gazed at Inuyasha and said: "Even her foolish First Father eventually learnt to love his little brother very much. Tsukiyo is obviously a better demon than I ever was, so she will take good care of our Himizu. Perhaps they will even be mates."

"We can hope."

Over the next fifty years, Sesshomaru and Inuyasha had two more children by Usugumo, a boy for Sesshomaru and a girl for Inuyasha, before deciding that four was enough. The children grew up strong and beautiful. They respected and honoured their birth mother, but they loved both their fathers so wholeheartedly that the two demon lords of these lands found that they had exceeded by miles their hopes for a true family of their own.

Tsukiyo and Himizu did choose each other as mates when they matured.

Sesshomaru's son Kaguya, so named because of his brightly shining gold eyes and hair like white light, was selected by Lady Shirakumo to succeed her as the ruler of the dog demon kingdom of the far west.

Inuyasha's daughter Sekka, who was given her name because she had looked to them like a perfect little snowflake when she was born, spent the longest time trying to decide whether she liked her second brother Kaguya better, or a distant human cousin of hers – for Inuyasha had made contact with the descendants of his mother's brothers and sisters at last. Tender-hearted, adolescent Sekka fell hard for one of the handsome boys, and kept her doting second brother waiting for almost a century before her human sweetheart died of old age, and she had to return to her demonfolk.

"I'm afraid Sekka is a bit flighty," Inuyasha said worriedly to Sesshomaru. "She can't have got that from _me_ – are you sure she didn't come from your seed instead?"

"I'm _very_ sure she came from you," Sesshomaru replied dryly, looking at their beautiful, two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old daughter, who was the only one of the siblings to have the precious puppy ears gracing her crown. "Whatever happens, Kaguya has said that he is determined to woo his sister. He wants no one else."

"She doesn't want to hear any of that right now, as she insists that her human relations find it shocking that her brother would want to, as they put it, 'marry' her."

"She is a three-quarter demon who is more powerful than half the full demons we know. She will come around," Sesshomaru confidently assured his mate.

He was right. Eventually, Sekka got over the loss of her human boy, and finally turned more interested eyes in Kaguya's direction when Tsukiyo and Himizu gave her a nudge that way.

The children of their children blended Sesshomaru's and Inuyasha's blood in their lines, so that the two brothers truly became one in their descendants.

Tsukiyo proved herself strong, wise and even-tempered, a great demoness more than capable of ruling her fathers' lands, with her powerful and beloved brother-mate by her side. In her one thousand-and-seven-hundredth year of life, her fathers gave her the throne and assumed the roles of regents, proud grandparents and great-grandparents to the younger ones. It contented them in their later years to have more time to themselves – for they had never stopped loving each other fiercely.

With Tsukiyo's ascension to the throne, the Age of the Ashuras came to an end. The Era of the Warring Demons was succeeded by a new age of peace, and the line of the dog demons descended from both Sesshomaru and Inuyasha continued to rule the western and far western kingdoms wisely and well.

Their descendants never forgot them, the two great demon lords who had fathered them all. The stories of Sesshomaru's and Inuyasha's exploits and achievements, and most of all their love for each other, were faithfully written down and told over and over again, so that no one would forget them for as long as there were people in the world to remember.

And in every one of these tales, they lived, as good people do in all the best old stories, happily ever after.

\- END -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fairy tale has come to an end at last – in a good way, I hope. Thanks to all of you who have read it and reviewed it, loved it or hated it, and told me so.
> 
> There have been some difficult times in the writing of this story, especially when the plot I had in mind required me to hurt the characters. But life holds joy as well as suffering, and even fairy-tale life must take its course of dark moments and light.
> 
> Although I retained the Japanese names of the manga characters, gave Japanese names to my original characters, and held on to certain aspects of Japanese culture, this has really been a fairy tale with a quasi-European flavour. I incorporated elements of Western fairy tales into parts of the story, such as The Snow Queen for the legend of the sacred crystal, and Snow White for Kanna's mirror, while the demon lord's castle was, in my imagination, a Gothic-medieval-Arthurian-style building.
> 
> I also wanted to echo as much of Rumiko Takahashi's manga as possible, only making big twists to the manga storyline and backgrounds of the characters to stitch them into the quilt of this alternate universe. All credit for the Inuyasha manga and its characters of course goes to Ms Takahashi – I have merely borrowed what she created in order to turn it into something else here.
> 
> I previously had a long author's note in one of the chapters about why I translated Sesshomaru's name the way I did for this tale, but I've removed it because it was much too unwieldy. It would probably still be too unwieldy here, so I'm leaving it out for now.


End file.
